Function Health raises $298M to bring a consumer approach with AI-based insights into its membership service. An effort for better preventive — and proactive — health care (and for some to make a buck off folks’ worries) is being mobilized thanks to a startup that’s raised another large round of funding.
Function Health, which runs a membership service aimed at applying machine learning methods to analyze the results of routine lab tests and other wearable data in fragmented medical records as part of people’s individual regimens for looking after their health, has picked up $298 million in Series B funding.
The funding round included a16z, Aglaé Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Battery Ventures and NFDG, as well as cash from Roku founder Anthony Wood and NBA players-turned-investors Allen Crabbe, Blake Griffin and Taylor Griffin.
With the new capital, Function Health said in a release that it has raised $350 million to date.
Positioning itself as a device-agnostic health data layer, the company connects lab results, diagnostics and clinical notes to streams from wearables in order to deliver longitudinal and personalized guidance. It notes that it currently has 75 U.S. locations and is aiming for nearly 200, and says that, to date, the company has completed more than 50 million lab tests.
A big bet on consumer diagnostics and monitoring
Healthcare is changing from episodic, clinic-centered care to continuous, data-rich monitoring. Analyses by Rock Health and KFF have shown that consumer interest in paying out of pocket for preventive diagnostics and services for longitudinal tracking has been consistent even as access to primary care tightens and chronic conditions continue to generate the lion’s share of U.S. medical costs.
Function Health’s model carries that trend further than step counts and sleep scores go. By taking root in periodic bloodwork and other diagnostics — as opposed to just coaching — the company hopes to offer trendlines on critical markers, as well as surface problems well before they become acute. A distributed clinic footprint allows for standardized phlebotomy and larger panels, distinguishing it from pure at-home or wearables-only plays.
Medical intelligence and the company’s data strategy
Accompanying the funding, Function Health unveiled the Medical Intelligence Lab, a physician-led initiative to create a generative AI model for individual health insights. The service is meant to combine a member’s historical lab results, clinician notes, imaging summaries and related research — then deliver contextual guidance in plain language through a chatbot interface.
In practice, that might involve explaining how changes in a patient’s LDL and ApoB levels are related to cardiovascular risk, alerting a clinician to thyroid swings that merit follow-up, or aggregating the big picture on glucose and A1c as well as lifestyle data pulled from wearables. The company emphasizes a notion of doctors in the loop with model development, an increasingly popular safeguard to cut down on hallucinations and keep recommendations within evidence-based bounds. A JAMA piece of peer-reviewed work has demonstrated that AI trained on retrieval-based approaches can be used to enhance factuality and answer quality when answers are anchored in a user’s chart.
Function Health’s bet is that members don’t want yet another one-size-fits-all coach — they want an always-on, data-fluent co-pilot — one with real “knowledge” of their labs and history, as any of their doctors have, that can interpret complex biomarker trends into next-best actions.
Competition in consumer diagnostics and differentiation
The field is crowded. Superpower, Neko Health and InsideTracker (to name a few) are racing to claim the consumer health stack with different blends of scanning, bloodwork and coaching. Function Health’s argument is that including lab testing, diagnostics and clinical insight in a device-agnostic platform provides a more complete view than a point solution or an AI coach layered on top of limited information.
The lift in getting this operationally viable is huge — from standing up and standardizing collection sites to ensuring quality across partners, to stitching together disparate EHRs and device feeds. If Function Health can keep that friction low, turning raw experiences into clear, actionable guidance, then that integration becomes difficult for others to replicate at scale.
Privacy, trust, and the regulatory issues to navigate
The company says it is HIPAA compliant, its data is end-to-end encrypted, and the company states that it does not sell personal information. Trust is table stakes in consumer diagnostics: Members are entrusting sensitive lab values and clinical history, not just step counts. Clear opt-ins, greater governance over data and granular controls will be key to retention.
And there’s also a line to respect, the regulatory one. AI that teaches or contextualizes data is regulated in a substantially different manner than software that purports to diagnose. Here, expectations are set by the FDA’s framework for clinical decision support and HHS guidance on privacy concerning health data. Expect Function Health to market its system more as informational guidance under physician supervision rather than a standalone diagnostic tool.
What the $2.5B valuation signals about Function Health
A $2.5 billion valuation at Series B implies strong early revenue traction and faith in long-term member retention, particularly in a funding environment that has been choosy with digital health growth stories. The prize is large: continuing diagnostics that connect to quantifiable results, and employer and payer collaborations that incentivize risk reduction along with a data resource that grows in value with every test and visit.
The flip side is execution risk: maintaining accuracy as the model adds more modalities, keeping people engaged after their novelty dose has worn off, and negotiating reimbursement when relevant. For now, the amount of this round is a statement from investors on their conviction that longitudinal labs plus physician-directed AI can push preventive care beyond buzzword to daily habit.