Crux, a new healthcare benefits platform focused on expanding affordable access to high-demand quality-of-life medications, has officially launched with $6.5 million in pre-seed funding from Red Cell Partners. The company emerged from stealth, aiming to transform how employers offer access to popular but expensive therapies that are often excluded from traditional insurance coverage.
The Virginia-based company has built what it describes as the first benefits platform designed to combine employer non-taxed subsidies with employee contributions to make ongoing, high-demand medications more financially accessible. These treatments, which support general well-being and often require continuous use, include weight-management drugs, behavioral health medications, sleep treatments, and other consumer-driven therapies.
U.S. employers can now join the Crux waitlist to prepare for onboarding beginning in January, with the first prescriptions expected to be delivered by February 2026. Crux plans to partner directly with global pharmaceutical manufacturers to offer employer groups access to steeply discounted prices without markups, hidden fees, or intermediary rebate structures.
The company says its platform is designed to simplify access and create a frictionless purchasing experience. Employers will be able to configure their own contribution levels, select preferred care-support vendors, provide tax-advantaged subsidies to employees, and pay only for benefits that are actually used. Employees will gain access to optional engagement tools and educational resources, and receive expedited next-day delivery on all orders. The program can be adopted at any time during the year and is not bound by open enrollment cycles.
Crux’s founding team includes executives with a long history of scaling employer-sponsored health benefits. All three co-founders previously played pivotal roles at Rally Health, one of the healthcare industry’s earliest consumer-oriented digital health companies, which was acquired by UnitedHealth Group in 2017 and later surpassed $1 billion in revenue.
Grant Verstandig, Crux’s Co-founder and Executive Chairman, previously founded Rally Health and later served as UnitedHealth Group’s Chief Digital Officer. Chip Nash, Co-founder and CEO, joined Rally as its third employee and helped grow the organization into the largest incentives platform in healthcare. Co-founder Naimish Patel served as Optum’s Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Solutions and was Rally’s first employee.
Red Cell Partners, Crux’s lead investor, is a venture studio that builds and launches technology-driven companies across healthcare, cyber, and national security. Crux is its latest effort to address structural gaps in the U.S. healthcare system by developing solutions aimed at large unmet needs.
Employers interested in exploring Crux’s benefits offering can join the waitlist at getcrux.com.
KEY QUOTES:
“The economics of integrated pharmacy benefits have been working against U.S. employers and beneficiaries for far too long, keeping breakthrough medications out of reach for most Americans. It’s time for that to change. Crux delivers significant value for our nation’s forward-thinking employers, giving them the unique opportunity to meet unprecedented levels of demand from employees with thoughtful, employer-sponsored programs that deliver better economic terms, allow for flexibility, and empower employees with more choice when it comes to their health and wellbeing.”
Chip Nash, Co-founder and CEO
“After scaling Rally to over $1 billion in revenue, I learned that the hardest problems in healthcare aren’t clinical, they’re structural. With the popularity of medications like GLP-1s soaring among employees for not just weight loss but addiction, sleep, and more, these miracle drugs may well be the greatest medicine to come along since the discovery of penicillin. Employers want to meet the demand, but the existing infrastructure makes it impossible. Red Cell incubated Crux to build a chassis that works.”
Grant Verstandig, Co-founder and Executive Chairman; Founder and CEO of Red Cell Partners
