- Virta Health — the leader in type 2 diabetes reversal — announced $133 million of equity financing led by Tiger Global. These are the details.
Virta Health — the leader in type 2 diabetes reversal — announced $133 million of equity financing led by Tiger Global. And the latest funding round will accelerate Virta’s efforts to drive widespread adoption of its telehealth-powered diabetes reversal treatment. Virta helps people reverse their chronic disease while removing the need for costly medications, including insulin.
Virta has been experiencing surging demand from large employers, health plans, and government entities. And organizations have been 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.
Nearly half of U.S. adults suffer from type 2 diabetes or prediabetes. Even though trillions of dollars hav been spent on diabetes and related conditions over the past decade, there has been no improvement in population-level outcomes. And the COVID-19 pandemic has made matters worse. People with diabetes are at high risk for severe illness from COVID-19, and the risk of dying from the disease is twice as high compared to those without diabetes.
Virta’s approach provides an answer to our nation’s metabolic crisis. And 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% — which rivals drug therapies. And 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 about $5,000 per patient per year in gross savings.
The Series E funding follows a recent $65 million raise in December of 2020, nearly doubling the company’s valuation in just 5 months to $2 billion. And financing will help support growth in research and product innovation as well as enable Virta’s commercial team to meet the demand for diabetes reversal from employers, health plans, and government.
KEY QUOTES:
“The norm in diabetes care has been more medications, more weight gain, and more suffering. Diabetes reversal changes this. We have shown a path for people to live medication and diabetes-free, and this investment is about reaching even more people and taking diabetes reversal mainstream.”
— Sami Inkinen, Virta Health Co-founder and CEO
“Virta is redefining how diabetes and other chronic diseases should be cared for, delivering significantly better health outcomes and impressive cost savings. We are excited to partner with Virta as its pioneering approach becomes an invaluable benefit offering for more employers and health plans everywhere.”
— Scott Shleifer of Tiger Global
