What You Should Know:
– Virta Health, a San Francisco, CA-based company raises $133M led by , to scale its virtual metabolic clinic and approach to reversing chronic metabolic conditions (type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, and obesity) to the masses led by Tiger Global.
– The Series E financing follows a recent $65 million raise in December of 2020, nearly doubling the company’s valuation in just 5 months to $2 billion.
– Buoyed by delivering transformational outcomes in patient health and cost savings, Virta is experiencing surging demand from large employers, health plans, and government entities. Organizations are eager to add reversal solutions to their benefits portfolios, driving Virta’s growth rate to nearly 200% year over year. Virta works with over 100 organizations and treats patients in all 50 states.
Impact of Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is one of the most expensive chronic illnesses in America. Nearly half of U.S. adults have either diabetes or pre-diabetes, and the epidemic is still growing. This also comes at a time when diabetes reversal is super critical, as T2D + uncontrolled blood sugar prove the biggest risk factors for negative outcomes & death from COVID-19. Enterprises, health plans, and consumers all understand the urgent need to mitigate this risk, & demand for Virta’s 100% virtual treatment–that helps patients restore blood sugar levels w/o medications–has been booming.
Founded in 2014 with the goal of reversing diabetes in 100 million people by 2025, Virta is the first clinically-proven treatment to safely and sustainably reverse type 2 diabetes. The clinically proven Virta Treatment reverses type 2 diabetes and significantly improves several chronic comorbidities, taking direct aim at these skyrocketing healthcare costs and nearly one-third of the more than $3 trillion in annual U.S. healthcare spend.
Virta’s approach offers an answer to our nation’s metabolic crisis. In peer-reviewed clinical studies, 94% of patients using insulin decrease or eliminate their dosage at one year, and 63% of all diabetes prescriptions are eliminated. Medication reduction occurs simultaneously with an average drop in HbA1c (a measure of blood sugar) of 1.3%—a figure that rivals drug therapies. Virta’s weight loss results exceed the goals of the National Diabetes Prevention Program and the FDA benchmark for weight loss drugs by nearly 150%. For healthcare payers, these improvements can translate to an estimated $5,000 per patient per year in gross savings.
Outcomes
Most importantly, this investment will speed up efforts to make diabetes reversal available to more of the 30 million Americans struggling with type 2 diabetes, including:
– Donnie, who eliminated two types of insulin, lost 20 pounds, and improved his A1c from 11% to 6% in just 4 months
– Abbie, who lost 45 pounds, eliminated her injectable medications, improved her A1c by 5 points, and even after a year on Virta continues to see improvement
– Mario, who moved his A1c from 11.6% to 5.1% and lost 40 pounds in 6 months, and has the energy and mobility to play basketball with his daughter again
– Lori, who avoided expensive bariatric surgery after finding Virta, and is no longer on any medications for diabetes or multiple sclerosis. She also lost over 70 pounds
– Greg, who no longer needs Novolog or metformin, has improved his triglycerides from 500 mg/dL to 129 mg/dL, and has returned to his love of hiking and taking long walks
– Chris, who, in only 7 months, no longer needs metformin or blood pressure medication, has normal blood sugar without medication, has lost 85 pounds, and has seen pain in his hands disappear
