Breaking: telehealth nutrition provider Foodsmart taps former Amwell COO Kurt Knight as CEO

March 18, 2025 | by

Kurt Knight to head up ‘food as medicine’ Foodsmart telehealth. Foodsmart, a telehealth nutrition and food planning/delivery service targeted to insurers and employers, announced that Kurt Knight, a former Amwell chief operating officer, has been named as their new CEO. He replaces as CEO the current founder/CEO Jason Langheier, MD, MPH, a physician who founded the company based in San Francisco in 2010. Dr. Langheier will remain on the board and as chief science officer. Their Zipongo platform personalizes dietary needs based on biometrics and health history.

Limited information on the executive change is paywalled at Endpoints today, but the LinkedIn post by reporter Ngai Yeung recaps most of the news. Of note in her post and article is that 75% of Foodsmart’s customers are Medicaid members or lower-income workers. With cuts in Medicaid funding to states being considered at the Federal level (in both the preceding and current administrations), this might look like an unsteady base. Mr. Knight believes there is more room for Medicaid plan expansion. They claim that more than 40% of its patients who are food insecure become food secure through the program. Foodsmart also serves health systems and enterprise customers, with financial backers in both. 

Kurt Knight was chief operating officer (COO) of Amwell from October 2019 to end of 2024, ending 13 years there in multiple positions. The COO position was consolidated into the chief financial officer (CFO) position now held by Mark Hirschhorn [TTA 23 Oct 2024]. From March 2022 and currently, he is a partner at investor SpringTide Ventures in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His post on LinkedIn also announces the change. 

Foodsmart’s funding since 2012 exceeds $314 million. Last year, they added a tiny $10 million Series C plus a jumbo venture round of $200 million through the UN-linked Rise Fund last year, a big bet on ‘food as medicine’. Additional investors include Memorial Hermann, Advocate Aurora Health, 62 Ventures, the Mayfield Fund, and Intermountain Healthcare. Crunchbase, FierceHealthcare

News and funding roundup: Vida Health’s $100M Series D, Kry’s $316M raise, CVS and Advocate Aurora’s fresh funds, Boost Mobile offers K Health symptom checker

May 8, 2021 | by

Vida Health, a virtual platform for chronic condition and mental health management, raised $110 million in a Series D financing led by General Atlantic, joined by Centene, AXA Venture Partners (AVP), and Ardea Capital Partners along with a number of earlier investors. Vida has a network of clinicians, mental health coaches, dietitians, and licensed therapists to provide virtual care programs to payers like Centene and Humana, plus employers such as Boeing, Visa, Cisco, and eBay. The company reports that it tripled its revenue since January 2020 and expanded its existing nationwide network of therapists, coaches, dietitians, and diabetes educators by more than 400 percent. Vida’s involvement with Centene started with a 20-state rollout in the Ambetter plans, the Centene health insurance marketplace product, Ambetter, for members with chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and treatment/coaching for mental health conditions like stress and depression. Vida’s total financing since 2014 totals $188 million. Release, Crunchbase, Mobihealthnews

Sweden’s Kry (Livi in the UK, US, and France) raised a Series D of €262 million, or about $316 million to finance expansion into additional countries and to scale their telemedicine platform. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Teachers’ Innovation Platform, along with existing investors Index Ventures, Creandum, and Accel, led the round. Valuation is now estimated at about $2B (nearly €1.66 bn). Silicon Canals, FierceBiotech

If you’re looking for funding, CVS Health has launched a $100 million venture capital fund to capitalize projects and innovations from digital healthcare and tech companies to make healthcare more accessible, affordable, and…better. CVS and Aetna have already been an investor in digital health, with about 20 such findings. More information on CVS Health Ventures is here.  Release

Want more funding? Advocate Aurora Enterprises (AAE), part of Advocate Aurora Health System in Illinois and Wisconsin, also is funding consumer health and wellness, with recent buys of home care company Senior Helpers in a $180 million deal following on $25 million for a telenutrition (!) company, Foodsmart. Some have questioned how nonprofit health systems like Advocate Aurora and Ascension have deep enough pockets to get into the risky funding business. FierceHealthcare, Healthcare Dive.

Finally, in the Everybody’s Getting Into The Telehealth Act Department, Boost Mobile is offering the K Health symptom checker to its customers and immediate families. The catch: you have to subscribe to their Unlimited Plus plan. But clever, though. HITConsultant