Biotech News | Read the latest health news on TechCrunch

Khosla-backed Marble, built by former Headway founders, offers affordable group therapy for teens

Marina Temkin — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 15:00:59 +0000

Rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are surging among U.S. teens. A recent report from the Center of Disease Control found that nearly one in three girls have seriously considered suicide, and a significant number, 13% have actually attempted it. Psychologists have various theories about what’s causing adolescent mental health crises. Some blame the […]

How Abridge became one of the most talked about healthcare AI startups

Marina Temkin — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 04:08:20 +0000

Ask any of the health-focused VCs to name one of the top AI startups and one name comes up over and over again: a company based in Pittsburgh called Abridge. And it’s a startup that launched before OpenAI was a household name and large language models (LLMs) entered the common Valley vocabulary. In 2019, Shiv […]

Subscription vitamin company Care/of is shutting down

Anthony Ha — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 21:55:58 +0000

Care/of, a company offering personalized subscription vitamin packs, says it will be canceling all subscriptions as of Monday, June 17 and will no longer be accepting new orders. The news doesn’t come completely out of the blue, as Care/of had previously disclosed in a New York Department of Labor filing that it planned to lay […]

Tempus rises 9% on the first day of trading, demonstrating investor appetite for a health tech with a promise of AI

Marina Temkin — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 19:29:26 +0000

Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company started by Eric Lefkofsky, who previously founded Groupon, debuted on Nasdaq on Friday, rising about 15% on the opening. The company priced its IPO on Thursday at $37 apiece, at the top of its $35 to $37 price range, raising nearly $411 million at a fully diluted […]

Enveda raises $55M to combine ancient remedies with AI for drug discovery

Marina Temkin — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0000

For centuries, people chewed willow tree bark to relieve pain, but scientists at chemical firm Bayer didn’t isolate its active ingredient until the 1800s and eventually patented its modified version as Aspirin. Aspirin is just one example of a medicine derived from natural sources. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that around 40% of […]

Foresite Capital raises $900M sixth fund for investing in life sciences companies

Marina Temkin — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Venture fundraising has been a slog over the last few years, even for firms with a strong track record. That’s Foresite Capital’s experience. Despite having 47 IPOs, 28 M&As and 58 FDA-approved drugs under its belt, the 13-year-old multi-stage healthcare and life sciences firm took two years to raise its sixth fund. “Almost all of […]

Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI

Marina Temkin — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 21:03:40 +0000

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by NEA, according to two people familiar with the deal. Existing investors Sequoia, which led Anterior’s $3.2 million seed round last September, and Neo, an accelerator […]

Prolific Machines, with a $55M Series B, shines ‘light’ on a better way to grow lab proteins for food and medicine

Christine Hall — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Prolific Machines believes it has a way of transitioning away from molecules to something better: light.

Eyebot raised $6M for AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second vision exams without an on-site optometrist

Marina Temkin — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Over half of Americans wear corrective glasses or contact lenses. While there isn’t a shortage of low-cost and luxury frames available online or in stores, consumers can only buy them with a current eyeglass prescription. That means they first need a vision exam from an optometrist to receive that prescription. But due to a nationwide […]

Eko Health scores $41M to detect heart and lung disease earlier and more accurately

Marina Temkin — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000

In 1816, French physician René Laennec invented an instrument that allowed doctors to listen to the heart and lungs. That device — a stethoscope — eventually evolved from a simple wooden tube to a lightweight two-earpiece version most doctors today wear around their necks. Eko Health, a startup founded in 2013, is bringing this ubiquitous […]

Sword Health raises $130M and its valuation soars to $3B

Marina Temkin — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000

AI-powered virtual physical therapy platform Sword Health has seen its valuation soar 50% to $3 billion.

WTF is AI?

Devin Coldewey — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 20:00:29 +0000

What is AI? We've put together this non-technical guide to give anyone a fighting chance to understand how and why today's AI works.

General Catalyst-backed Jasper Health lays off staff

Marina Temkin, Amanda Silberling — Fri, 31 May 2024 23:10:44 +0000

Jasper Health, a cancer care platform startup, laid off a substantial part of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

Billionaire Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky is back with another IPO: AI health tech Tempus

Marina Temkin — Thu, 30 May 2024 21:34:54 +0000

Eric Lefkofsky knows the public listing rodeo well and is about to enter it for a fourth time. The serial entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at nearly $4 billion, has already taken three businesses he’s founded public. Today he’s the founder of Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company preparing to IPO. But […]

Valar Labs debuts AI-powered cancer care prediction tool and secures $22M

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 30 May 2024 15:59:00 +0000

Biotech startup Valar Labs has built a tool that accurately predicts certain treatment outcomes, potentially saving precious time for patients.

Rhea reaps $10M more led by Thiel

Kate Park — Thu, 30 May 2024 12:00:24 +0000

Fertility remains a pressing concern around the world — birthrates are down in many countries, and infertility rates (that is, the inability to conceive) are up. Rhea, a Singapore- and New York-based reproductive health service provider, aims to tackle this challenge by bridging the global value chain and using technology. Rhea said Thursday that it […]

Mental health insurance platform ifeel raises a $20 million Series B

Mike Butcher — Wed, 29 May 2024 18:32:49 +0000

Ifeel is being offered as part of an employer’s or insurance provider’s healthcare coverage.

US pharma giant Cencora says Americans’ health information stolen in data breach

Zack Whittaker — Fri, 24 May 2024 13:40:29 +0000

About half a million patients have been notified so far, but the number of affected individuals is likely far higher.

Expressable brings speech therapy into the home

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 23 May 2024 21:49:33 +0000

Expressable is a platform that offers one-on-one virtual sessions with speech language pathologists.

Meet the Finnish biotech startup bringing a long-lost mycoprotein to your plate

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 23 May 2024 05:45:00 +0000

The best known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, a meat substitute that’s fast approaching its 40th birthday. But Finnish biotech startup Enifer is cooking up something even older: Its proprietary single-cell fungus-based protein, branded Pekilo, was originally developed in the 1960s and ’70s — by, of all things, the local paper industry. The focus back then […]