Rounding up the fundings first, as signs of life persist through AI disruptions, hacking, and layoffs:
Huma, the former Medopad, now up to a Series D and over $322 million in total funding. The $80
million funding represents a share issuance. Funders included AstraZeneca, Hat Technology Fund 4 by HAT SGR, HV Fund by Hitachi Ventures and Leaps by Bayer. London/New York-based Huma’s last major round was in May 2021 with a jumbo $130 million Series C, not unusual for that time. That round had a $70 million add-on option; looking at Crunchbase, there was a corporate round of £25 million and a debt financing of $30 million between the Series C and D. In 2020, Huma renamed, relogo’d, and pivoted then from something ill-defined around predictive diagnostics to a platform that supports ‘hospital at home’ plus pharma and research companies in large, decentralized clinical trials.
With the funding, Huma also announced the Huma Cloud Platform, designed to benefit their own projects and those of digital health developers with a library of pre-built modules and device-connectivity capabilities. The platform is FDA Class II, EU MDR Class IIb and Saudi FDA Class C cleared. Huma release, Mobihealthnews
Truvian Health, developer of an automated digital benchtop blood-testing and diagnostics system, scored a $74 million raise in a venture round. The round was led by Great Point Ventures and Wittington Ventures, with participation from existing investors Medical Excellence Capital, Tao Capital, DNS Capital, 7wireVentures and TYH Capital. The company has raised over $208 million through this round and a 2021 (!) $105 million Series C. Truvian’s analyzer is not FDA cleared as of yet and the raise will be used to obtain that clearance. Truvian is also partnering with Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s largest pharmacy, as a commercial partner, having worked with Truvian last year on an onsite evaluation versus standard lab testing. Echoes of Theranos, except that it may work? Release, Mobihealthnews
Behavioral health platforms are still getting financing, with Headway benefiting from a $100 million unlettered venture round. Spark Capital led the round with previous investors participating including Thrive Capital, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Global Founders Capital for a total funding of $325 million and a $2.3 billion valuation. Their last round was a $125 million Series C in October 2023 which was pretty impressive in the middle of a funding drought. Reports are a little scarce including no mention on their website, but Behavioral Health Business has what’s available via Bloomberg News. Headway’s niche is exclusively partnering with health plans to provide members with therapy and psychiatry.
One of Headway’s competitors, Headspace, named a new CEO, Tom Pickett, as their new CEO, effective 12 August. He joins from DoorDash, where he served as chief revenue officer, which is quite a leap. Prior to that, he was in digital media and the US Navy as F/A-18 pilot and “Top Gun” graduate. Pickett replaces Russell Glass, who resigned in March. Headspace has had a rocky time of it versus competition, with layoffs of 15% last July and a $105 million senior debt financing to get by [TTA 27 July 2023]. Release
Value-based cancer care platform Thyme Care announced a capital raise of $95 million. The Series B round of equity funding was led by Concord Health Partners with participation from all existing investors, including CVS Health Ventures, Town Hall Ventures, a16z Bio + Health, AlleyCorp, Echo Health Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures, and Foresite Capital. Adding to this was a $40 million debt financing from Banc of California. The fresh funding brings their total to $178 million. According to MedCityNews, “Thyme Care manages over half a billion dollars in medical spend through its risk-based contracts and anticipates tripling that amount within the next year. The company has also doubled its oncology partnerships in the last six months and intends to expand nationwide by securing new contracts with health plans, employers and primary care groups that bear financial risk”. Release, Mobihealthnews
Freshpaint took a slightly different tack with its announcement of a $30 million Series B round. Their CEO/co-founder’s blog for this healthcare-focused performance marketing/data infrastructure security company interestingly asks the question why they decided to obtain additional financing. Well, they want to cover the waterfront (Editor’s term) of healthcare beyond hospitals to payers, other providers, and retail health. The financing was led by Threshold with additional participation from SignalFire, Intel Capital, Zero Prime, and Y Combinator. Their Series A back in November 2022 was a modest $9.5 million, for a total since their start of $42 million.
On the M&A front, we have the UK’s RLDatix acquiring Carebeans. Transaction cost and staff transitions were not disclosed. The two systems will be integrated with single sign in. RLDatix is a healthcare operations platform that captures data across risk, safety, compliance, provider lifecycle and workforce management. Carebeans also provides care management services software primarily in the domicilary, care planning, supported care, and social care management sectors. Release
Elevance (the former Anthem) had a decent quarter. Their Q2 notched $2.3 billion in profit but the company turned around and lowered their full year guidance due to weakness in the health insurance business that reduced total revenue slightly to $43.2 billion. While beating Mr. Market, the ongoing weaknesses in the payer market have analysts seeing yellow and red flags. Elevance’s Medicaid enrollment declined 5%: 2.2 million to 45.8 million. As UHG stated in their earnings results, they are swimming against a general trend toward elevated utilization rates and higher acuity populations, particularly in Medicaid, which was offset by increased premiums. For Medicare Advantage, they believe their plans will benefit from CMS’ rerun of the Star ratings and balance out reimbursement cuts. Healthcare Dive, FierceHealthcare
As if the Steward Healthcare story couldn’t get any more seamy (not steamy–that was earlier this month), 14 executives paid themselves $1 million + salaries and bonuses in the year prior to the company’s Chapter 11. MedCityNews did the math on the bankruptcy filing addendum (Statement of Financial Affairs Amendment). The CEO earned a $3.7 million salary, the president of Steward Health Care a $1.73 million salary plus a $500,000 bonus, and the EVP for human resources a $842,000 salary with a $300,000 bonus. Extremely high C-level/EVP salaries in healthcare are not unusual even for smaller organizations, but Steward was in trouble plenty for some years, and being sued right and left by vendors for long-delayed payments and bouncing checks. You wonder what the debtors-in-possession will make of all of this
Last but certainly not least are reports of layoffs and major restructuring at Meta (Facebook)’s Reality Labs, which is their unit for augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) headset and software development unit. It’s now separated into two units, Wearables (headsets, glasses such as smart Ray-Bans) and Metaverse (platform and Quest headsets). Reports that are primarily paywalled have said that multiple leaders have been laid off from the company, with The Information (paywalled) stating the late June layoff affected a dozen VPs and directors. Teams also have to cut spending 20% by 2026, with the bulk of the cuts this year. Meta, despite billions in investment and Metaverse hype by Mark Zuckerberg including a corporate name change, has largely failed against Apple’s Vision Pro and others. ABPLive, EM360Tech
Whither Meta? An Editor’s Opinion: This Editor believes that Meta requires a real housecleaning which may be beyond the abilities or interests of its controlling shareholder. The Reality Labs reorganization resembles rearranging deck chairs on a listing ship as AR/VR users in healthcare invariably use Apple and other headsets. While claiming 175 million users of an X-like platform called Threads, does anyone actually use it? Facebook is suffering from an aging user base and Gen X defection. Ads are down in overall share though still around 10%. Effectiveness in the past few years is also dropping due to fatigue factor. As a Facebook admin for a non-profit organization, their tools feel a decade old–clunky and hard to use. Facebook Marketplace is a modest success as an e-commerce adjunct to Facebook, but resembles CraigsList. Zuckerberg seems to care more for his charities and political influence, so perhaps it’s time for him to leave management to others–and retire.
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