Healthcare VC firm Initiate has a new $45M and has already founded five startups internally

Jessica Owens and Iana Dimkova, co-founders of Initiate Ventures, are launching their new healthcare/ life sciences-focused firm with a respectable $45 million debut fund. One of the ways they convinced limited partners to become investors is because they are building a combination early-stage and

Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington’s Thrive AI Health assistant has a bare-bones demo

In a splashy op-ed in Time published this summer, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Thrive AI Health, a venture with the goal of building an AI-powered assistant to promote healthier lifestyles. Backed by Huffington's mental wellness firm Thrive Glob

Amazon’s telehealth platform adds low-cost plans for hair loss, skin care, and more

Amazon One Medical is expanding its telehealth services with the launch of upfront and low-cost treatment plans and medication delivery for several beauty and lifestyle concerns. Customers can get treatment plans and medication for men’s hair loss for as low as $16 per month, anti-aging skin

23andMe cuts 40% of staff in restructuring

23andMe announced on Monday it would cut 40% of its workforce, representing more than 200 employees, as part of a restructuring at the company. The genetic testing company is also discontinuing its therapeutics business and winding down its clinical trials; it expects these changes to save $35 mill

Zoom partners with Suki to offer AI-powered medical note-taking

Startups that build AI medical assistants and medical scribes, which save doctors time that they would otherwise spend taking notes and populating medical records, have been booming over the past year. And incumbents now want to get in on the action. On Tuesday, video-conferencing company Zoom sai

How a medtech market opportunity is shaping up for wearable neurotech

When you think of brain-stimulating medtech, startups building wearables as therapeutics probably aren’t the first thing that springs to mind. Such tech is still flying fairly under the radar — perhaps, in part, because these sorts of companies have raised a fraction of the investment t

What is wearable neurotech and why might we need it?

The wearables category already contains multitudes, from exercise-focused smart watches and sleep-tracking smart rings to smart women’s health tech and semi-invasive blood glucose monitors — to name a few of the gizmos we’ve tracked over roughly a decade of novel personal hardware

Aktiia trained AI on 11 billion data points of blood pressure, and now a clinically certified app is coming

As well as being a major cause of premature death worldwide, hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is a major risk factor for stroke, coronary artery disease, and heart failure, and is a contributing factor to dementia. It also affects an estimated 1.3 billion people; up to 95% of cases

Amazon Pharmacy to expand its same-day delivery service to 20 more US cities

Amazon Pharmacy is expanding its same-day delivery service to 20 more U.S. cities next year, the company announced on Wednesday. Amazon says the expansion will more than double the number of cities where customers can get same-day delivery of their medications. As part of the expansion, Amazon is

Basecamp Research draws $60M to build a ‘GPT for biology’

While companies like OpenAI and Anthropic continue to popularize the idea of using ordinary language to ask artificial intelligence agents for answers to their questions, write their proposals or draw pictures, a London startup called Basecamp Research has raised $60 million to tackle a new frontie

Cancer AI Alliance joins medical and tech expertise together with $40M to collaborate on next-gen care

A group of major medical institutions specializing in cancer care have formed a partnership to better take advantage of AI’s potential to advance the space. With $40 million of cash and resources from big tech backers, the Cancer AI Alliance (CAIA) could be a huge step forward in precision me

Lapsi is rebooting the stethoscope as a health tracking data platform

The consumerization of medtech marches on: Amsterdam-based startup Lapsi Health has just clinched FDA approval for its first clinical support tool, a digital stethoscope. The U.S. medical devices regulator, the Food & Drug Administration, has cleared it as a Class IIA (medium risk) medical devi

Moxie, which helps nurses launch medspas, raises a preemptive Series B from Lachy Groom

Moxie helps nurses open medspas by providing them with most of the tools they need to run their businesses, from billing software and marketing services to discounted supplies. The startup has raised a $10 million Series B led by existing investor Lachy Groom, a solo VC, with participation from Sig

Synex founder, once detained at the border with an 80-pound magnet, is building portable MRIs to test glucose

Back in 2019, Synex Medical founder Ben Nashman spent the night detained by U.S. customs. Nashman tried to explain he was simply transporting materials from Buffalo to Toronto for his homemade MRI. Customs, however, took issue with the label on the package: “nuclear magnetic resonance.”  Nash