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BFD Expert Voices - Health Tech Deals

BFD Expert Voices

Season Health, a food-as-medicine startup, will acquire the clinical assets of the dietitian network Wellory.

Why it matters: The deal is set to expand insurance coverage for Season, which is a main roadblock for many food-as-medicine startups, Aaron writes.

Details: Deal terms were not disclosed, but the transaction was financed through a SAFE note, with existing investors and strategic partners participating, a source familiar tells Aaron.

What they're saying: "This acquisition significantly grows the size and capabilities of our provider network, which is now 10 times larger, and vastly diversifies our group," says Josh Hix, CEO of Season.

"We are still well capitalized from our Series A and have no concrete plans to proactively fundraise at this time," he says.

"We will continue to look for smart and strategic partnerships."

How it works: Andreessen Horowitz-backed Season Health offers patients a combination of clinical care and access to affordable, medically tailored meals and groceries.

Season members engage with registered dietitians three to four times per month, on average, via both messaging and virtual visits, per the company.

Founded in 2019, Wellory is a nutrition care platform with registered dietitians, serving more than 120 million patients in-network.

Season will now serve all 50 states geographically in over 15 languages.

The combined business will be able to serve more patients with conditions like diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obesity, and high-risk pregnancy.

Catch up quick: Wellory has raised $5.37 million in seed funding from investors like Story Ventures and Harlem Capital. The business was valued at $10.5 million in 2020, according to PitchBook.

Season snagged a $34 million Series A led by Andreessen in March 2022, putting the company's pre-money valuation at $66 million, per PitchBook.

The big picture: Food-as-medicine is being embraced as a new appetizer on the menu of holistic care, but obstacles remain around data measuring and getting insurers on board.

Between the lines: Season's approach mitigates a scenario in which patients use benefits to buy unhealthful or non-nutritious food, codifying its network of food vendors.

Medicaid's food-as-medicine program, as it stands, doesn't have guardrails on what food can be bought with the money, Axios has reported.

Nor is data being collected on what people are buying, LexisNexis risk solutions government group CEO Haywood Talcove told Axios previously.

1 big thing: Season Health sets the table

Illustration of a plate shaped like a health cross with a knife and fork on either side.

Stef van Grieken went from Google Brain to biotech, closing $24 million in Series A funds for a startup called Cradle that's racing to apply generative AI to protein design, Erin writes.

Why it's the BFD: Van Grieken, a former product development leader at the tech giant, co-founded Cradle to engineer superior protein sequences and 3D structures for everything from cultured food to vaccines, per Bloomberg.

Details: Index Ventures led the round. Kindred Capital joined, alongside Recursion Pharmaceuticals co-founder Chris Gibson and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer.

An unnamed Merck & Co. board member also participated, per Bloomberg.

Funds will go to hiring and building more engineering and lab facilities.

How it works: Cradle is training its AI on billions of protein sequences and its own data to help scientists innovate and streamline protein design — an often costly and lengthy endeavor.

With offices in the Netherlands and Zurich, Cradle's clientele includes Johnson & Johnson, Novozymes A/S, and Twist Bioscience.

What they're saying: "It's still very early days in this field," van Grieken tells Bloomberg. "We are at maybe GPT 0.5."

Meanwhile, Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs this October announced a major progress update on AlphaFold, the deep learning model credited with predicting a protein's structure based on its amino acid sequence.

Now, the model can predict protein structures in combination with small molecules and nucleic acids — necessities for the design of new drugs.

State of play: The notion of applying AI to the design of proteins for food and medicine has been turbocharged by the creation of generative AI tools. Relevant recent deals include...

Recursion Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: RXRX) in July raised $50 million from Nvidia to speed up its drug discovery AI models.

Profluent, a Berkeley, Calif.-based startup led by former Salesforce AI research lead Ali Madani, in January raised $9 million in seed funding and debuted a peer-reviewed study in Nature Biotech summarizing its approach to protein development and design.

Insilico Medicine in 2022 raised $60 million in Series D financing from insiders including Warburg Pincus, B Capital, and Qiming Venture Partners.

2. The BFD: Ex-Googler gathers $24M for biotech

Illustration of a hand in a medical glove holding a beaker full of liquid

Want more health tech deals? Check out the Axios Pro Deals Tracker beta.

• Lassie, a Stockholm-based pet health and insurance app, raised €23m in Series B funding. Balderton Capital led, and was joined by insiders Felix Capital, Inventure, Passion Capital and Philian. https://axios.link/3uwi1xL

• Medmo, an NYC-based medical imaging tech company, raised $9m in unlabeled funding led by Lerer Hippeau and joined by insiders Jerusalem Venture Partners, C2 Ventures, and Stone IsraVentures, plus individual backers including PillPack founder Elliot Cohen and Klara co-founders Simon Bolz and Simon Lorenz. https://www.medmo.com 

• Augment Therapy, a Chagrin Falls, Oh.-based hospital-to-home physical therapy startup, raised $2.7m in seed funding from BlueTree Capital Group, CareSource, and the Healthcare Collaboration Fund. https://axios.link/3R0TxnY

• Gauge Capital made a growth investment in East Coast Institute for Research, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based clinical research site management organization. https://www.gaugecapital.com/

• Unlock Health, a Nashville-based portfolio company of Amulet Capital Partners, acquired SPM Group, a Chicago-based network of health and health care agencies, from Corridor Capital. https://www.unlockhealthnow.com/

3. Deals o' the day

• Nathan Myhra, former senior customer program exec at Olive AI, joined Centura Health as AVP of payer performance. https://www.centura.org 

• Mina Egan, former VP of care solutions at Accolade, joined Anomaly as chief growth officer. https://www.findanomaly.com 

• Cynthia Castro Sweet, former senior director of clinical research at Modern Health, joined Hinge Health as senior clinical research director. https://www.hingehealth.com

• Brandon Charles, former managing director and health practice partner at Accenture, joined Curative as chief medical officer. https://axios.link/3Gi7Ek3 

4. It's Personnel

🇺🇸 White House Initiative on Women's Health to be directed by Carolyn Mazure — Yale School of Medicine

🌯 From selling burritos to running a $7B health tech startup — WSJ

🏥 Top 10 health care industry predictions for 2024 — Forbes

👩 21 women in venture capital who made partner — Business Insider

5. Your daily dose

Illustration of a hand holding an eyedropper that has spelled out "daily dose" in liquid.

🦞 Aaron enjoyed seeing friends and family and feasting on two lobsters in one sitting. 

👏 Thanks for reading, and extra thanks to newsletter editor Claire Rychlewski and copy editor Mickey Meece. Please ask your colleagues, friends, and family to sign up.

November 28, 2023

1 big thing: Season Health sets the table