Biotech & Health
Read the latest news about biotech and health, from the latest health tech and medical devices to research in synthetic biology and genetics. Our biotech coverage has startups and research from around the world in context with industry and investment trends.
Prolific Machines, with a $55M Series B, shines ‘light’ on a better way to grow lab proteins for food and medicine
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
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…
Eko Health scores $41M to detect heart and lung disease earlier and more accurately
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…
AI-powered virtual physical therapy platform Sword Health has seen its valuation soar 50% to $3 billion.
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.
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
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,…
Valar Labs debuts AI-powered cancer care prediction tool and secures $22M
Biotech startup Valar Labs has built a tool that accurately predicts certain treatment outcomes, potentially saving precious time for patients.
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…
Mental health insurance platform ifeel raises a $20 million Series B
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
About half a million patients have been notified so far, but the number of affected individuals is likely far higher.
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
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…
IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises
IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…
Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more
Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.
As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…
Dietitian startup Fay has been booming from Ozempic patients and emerges from stealth with $25M from General Catalyst, Forerunner
For years, Sammy Faycurry has been hearing from his registered dietitian (RD) mom and sister about how poorly many Americans eat and their struggles with delivering nutritional counseling. Although nearly…
Triomics raises $15M Series A to automate cancer clinical trials matching
For cancer patients, medicines administered in clinical trials can help save or extend lives. But despite thousands of trials in the United States each year, only 3% to 5% of…
Google DeepMind debuts huge AlphaFold update and free proteomics-as-a-service web app
Google DeepMind has taken the wraps off a new version of AlphaFold, their transformative machine learning model that predicts the shape and behavior of proteins. AlphaFold 3 is not only…
Interest in male birth control has increased in the past few years, especially since the U.S. overturned Roe vs. Wade, which protected a woman’s right to have an abortion. Since…
Machine learning aids in discovery of sperm whale ‘alphabet’
Researchers at MIT CSAIL and Project CETI believe that they have unlocked a kind of sperm whale alphabet with the aid of machine learning technologies. Results from the study, which…
Rad AI, a startup that helps radiologists save time on report generation, raises $50M Series B from Khosla Ventures
In 2017, Vinod Khosla told CNBC that the job “of the radiologist will be obsolete in five years.” While the founder of Khosla Ventures later revised that timeline to as…
Deal Dive: Amae Health is building an in-person approach to mental healthcare in an increasingly digital space
While many recent mental health-focused startups are digital first, Amae Health focuses on the importance of in-person care.
Allozymes puts its accelerated enzymatics to work on a data and AI play, raising $15M
Allozymes uses a method in which millions of enzymes can be tested per day, rather than just a few hundred.
Featured Article
UnitedHealth data breach should be a wake-up call for the UK and NHS
The ransomware attack that has engulfed U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group and its tech subsidiary Change Healthcare is a data privacy nightmare for millions of U.S. patients, with CEO Andrew Witty confirming this week that it may impact as much as one-third of the country. But it should also…
How Y Combinator’s founder-matching service helped medical records AI startup Hona land $3M
Y Combinator’s founder matching tool has quietly become one of most powerful offerings. That’s how medical records AI startup Hona was founded.
Peloton to lay off 400 employees as CEO Barry McCarthy departs
Peloton, the exercise equipment maker, said it is laying off 15% of its workforce as part of cost-cutting measures.
UnitedHealthcare CEO says ‘maybe a third’ of US citizens were affected by recent hack
Two months after hackers broke into Change Healthcare systems stealing and then encrypting company data, it’s still unclear how many Americans were impacted by the cyberattack. Last month, Andrew Witty,…
Tiger Global-backed Innovaccer in talks to raise $250M in new funding, sources say
Innovaccer, a health tech startup that aggregates patient data across systems and care settings, is in advanced stages of talks with investors to raise as much as $250 million in…
Midi is building a digital platform for an oft-overlooked area of women’s health
When Joanna Strober was around 47, she stopped sleeping. While losing sleep is a common symptom of perimenopause, she first had to go to multiple providers, including driving 45 minutes…
