Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), now part of First Citizens Bank, is back with a roundup of the prior year in healthcare investment in the US and EU. 2025 was a year of contractions and skewed investments, what they called “barbells, bookends, and have-nots”, with fewer investors hotly chasing profitability and monetization. 

SVB broke ‘healthcare’ into four sectors: Biopharma, Healthtech, Dx (diagnostics)/Tools, and Device. This Editor’s analysis will concentrate on an overall look plus a deeper dive into Healthtech. SVB also broke out an area cutting across all four, emerging from side conversations into the spotlight. It’s an area where many of us have been laboring in for years–Longevity and Healthspan. (Surprise, surprise!)

Highlights:

• 2025 total healthcare investment in US and EU totaled $46.8 billion, down 12% versus 2024’s $53.2 billion. European investment remained flat. 2025 still exceeded the dreary days of 2023 that dipped sharply to $41.6 billion. (page 12) Yet adjusting for inflation between the two years, 2025 fell below 2023, which would be today $48 billion (Bureau of Labor Statistics using the Consumer Price Index). 
• Deal numbers fell 7% in 2025 to an estimated 2,517, versus 2024’s 2,704.
• AI investments across all four sectors was $22 billion–46%. (pages 2, 5)
• After Biopharma, Healthtech investments stayed relatively strong as the second largest category, growing from 2024’s $13.2 billion to $13.9 billion. (Note: SVB tracks only investment deals above $2 million)
• Investments resembled a canyon–plenty in Series A, cratering for Series B and Cs (the have-nots), rising for mega-deals around AI, redefined from the traditional $100 million+ to $300 million+. The higher definition reflects the big capital investments required for AI companies. The report calls it a ‘barbell’ shape–and the plates at both ends are heavy.
• There are fewer deals as investors seek companies with nearer-term scalability, strong fundamentals, defensibility, and strength of execution. Topping it–less money is available for investment from fewer VCs.
• Healthtech dominated AI unicorns with valuations above $1 billion: Abridge, OpenEvidence, Innovaccer, and Cera. (page 11)
• Healthtech saw only seven private M&As and three IPOs (Hinge Health and Omada in the US, 66nao Brain Training in China), versus 2024’s 14 and two respectively. (page 24)
• Healthtech investments fell off in H2 from a decent pace in H1. Both Series A and later stage companies had generous rounds, though getting there is harder than ever. Page 15 presents a roundup of both the Series A and later stage deals.
• Investor money raised fell to a decade low–$7 billion versus 2024’s $23 billion. Yet many name investors such as Venrock and General Catalyst closed $100 million healthcare funds, continuing the concentration on money following scale, fundamentals, and monetization versus story and potential. (page 7) 

A ‘must read’ is SVB’s discussion of the Longevity and Healthspan sector on pages 18-21. Finally, finally, the market is seeing the huge need and potential of therapies treating age-related conditions from ability to disease, growing 2.3x in 2025. The sector further concentrates into three areas:

• Geroscience: R&D into the biology of aging to reverse or mitigate changes. Companies: NewLimit, Altos, Cambrian, Rubedo, Aspen Neuroscience
• Consumer Healthspan: products for users that analyze everyday behaviors to stay healthy longer. Companies: Function, Viome, Oura, Whoop
• Intrinsic Capacity Healthtech: apps and tools extending functional everyday abilities. Companies: Neuralink, Sword Health, Hinge Health, Science

Based on early indications of investments and deals, 2026 looks brighter, but still continuing AI and consolidation.

A preview of the report is available with registration here. 

Updated 20 Jan: Mobihealthnews interviewed Megan Scheffel, who heads up their healthcare and life sciences practice, outside of JPM last week. She reviewed some of the study findings, such as the ‘barbell’ shape of investment (above). M&As are also reviving, looking “pretty” on the mega/later stage side, but on the smaller side perhaps not the “fantastic outcome” founders and investors wanted, but allowing the technology or founders to live to fight another day. This Q&A was telling:

MHN: Do you see any companies eating up other companies just to bury them?

Scheffel: I don’t know if I would say they’re burying them. I keep saying, like, there’s clearance racks.

For companies, SVB operates on two sides: banking and debt. A strategy, according to Ms. Scheffel, that hasn’t changed since before their near-death experience in 2023. She should know as with them for “a gazillion years” prior to that bad time. “We still really want to help companies, even if they’re not raising $300 million rounds every six months. We still are trying to help find ways to support them and support their causes.”

Her advice to companies to succeed: have good management teams and ideas with a “moat”–innovation, IP, and advantages. For investors, the downturns clear out the dead wood (as this Editor predicted after the 2022-3 shocks). To her, times like now are when good investors can make money from better companies.