Health tech funding: Insurtech Ethos lands $60M in GV-led round, Nurx $52M

Insurtech company Ethos snagged $60 million in funding in a Series C round led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Alphabet’s venture arm, and backed by Goldman Sachs, the company announced on August 27.

The company, founded in 2016, is focused on disrupting the life insurance industry and uses predictive analytics and big data to issue life insurance policies. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Accel also participated, bringing the total funding to-date to more than $100 million.

Ethos is now valued at nearly $500 million, Venture Beat reports.

Here’s a snapshot of other health IT funding deals over $5 million in August:

• Prescription delivery: Health technology company Nurx, which sells prescription drugs including birth control online, closed a $52 million Series C funding round led by Kleiner Perkins Digital Growth Fund and Union Square Ventures.
  Investors Reproductive Health Investors Alliance, Dreamers VC, Lowercase Capital, and Y Combinator also participated in the funding round. The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2014, has raised more than $90 million in debt and equity funding to date, with the latest infusion bringing its valuation to nearly $300 million, according to TechCrunch.

RELATED: Venture capital investment in AI and mental health startups surges in Q2: report

• Jobs marketplace: Nomad Health, an on-demand medical jobs marketplace that also advertises telemedicine positions, picked up $34 million in new equity and debt financing. Icon Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, led the financing with additional investment from prior investors Polaris Partners, RRE Ventures, .406 Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank.
• Healthcare data IT:  Startup MDClone, based in Israel, raised $26 million in Series B funding led by health tech venture capital fund aMoon and joined by earlier investors OrbiMed Israel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company’s U.S. clients include Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Intermountain Healthcare and the Regenstrief Institute.
• Patient engagement: Luma Health landed $16 million in a Series B equity funding, bringing total equity funding to $25.7 million. Led by PeakSpan Capital and with strategic investments from Cisco Investments, the Texas Medical Center, and continued investment from U.S. Venture Partners, Luma Health will use the round of funding to scale and hire new staff.

• AI diagnoses: Buoy Health, an online symptom checker that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose patients, closed a $15 million Series B funding round led by Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures. Health insurance company Humana joined the round as a strategic investor, and earlier backers F-Prime Capital (Fidelity Investments) and Optum Ventures also contributed.
• Digital health tools: Hello Heart reeled in a $12 million Series B round led by Khosla Ventures to help bankroll the expansion of its sales and engineering teams, according to FierceBioTech.
• Diagnostics platform: MIT-spinout Figur8 launched a digital platform to measure and track body movement as a biomarker with a boost in $7.5 million in seed funding. The company says its technology will help clinicians make better clinical decisions through advanced human movement data. Figur8’s diagnostics platform captures 3D skeletal movement in conjunction with muscle output to help trainers, therapists and physicians objectively measure musculoskeletal performance and recovery. The funding round was led by P5 Health Ventures, with participation from E14 Fund.

• Surgery optimization: PeerWell developed a digital platform focused on addressing workers’ compensation surgery issues, from pain management and surgery avoidance to surgery optimization and guided recovery. The company picked up $6.5 million in a Series A funding round. The funding was led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from XSeed Capital. The funding will help the company fast-track the commercial rollout of a new platform focused on musculoskeletal surgery therapy.
• Breathalyzer: Also, a reserve deputy sheriff and SWAT team member, Mike Lynn, who also is an emergency room doctor and former biotech venture capitalist, started a company called Hound Labs that is working on the first dual marijuana and alcohol breathalyzer. Hound Labs raised $30 million in a Series D financing round. Intrinsic Capital Partners led the round, with investors NFP Ventures and Main Street Advisors also contributing, as well as existing backers Icon Ventures and Benchmark.

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/health-tech-funding-snapshot-insurtech-ethos-lands-60m-gv-led-round-nurx-raises-52-million-and