Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Ventures is leading a $35 million Series B for Simple, an AI-driven nutrition-based well-being app which has quietly built one of the largest subscription businesses in the industry. The company claims that it has around 700,000 subscribers and approximately $160 million in annual recurring revenue, which the new financing round will be used to reinforce its AI coaching engine with further development of an unspecified women’s health program, as well as to expand into midlife programs. The round also saw presence from private credit firm Liquidity, with the new investment taking Simple’s overall funding to $45 million.
Simple’s core feature is Avo, an AI coach that offers customized advice via chat. Avo now supports more than 100,000 coaching conversations a day and processes close to 300,000 daily meal logs that provide input on all areas of wellness including nutrition, activity, fasting and daily habits. Instead, by nudging behavior change with specific feedback and long-term context, the app takes a different tack from promoting calorie counting or generic lesson plans.
Why HartBeat Is Gambling on AI Coaching Technology
The funding reflects a broader evolution in weight management to virtual, habits-first programs that can dovetail with the surge of GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and tirzepatide. Morgan Stanley estimates that sales of GLP-1 products will reach more than $100 billion annually (from a base of roughly $15.4 billion in 2020) by 2030, and investors expect continued demand for tools that help users establish routines during — and after — their medication use. Endless AI will have a nice adoption story with scalable distribution (no manual staff) and margins.
For HartBeat Ventures, which is focused on consumer and wellness bets, that means providing more than just capital. The reach and brand instincts of the firm can help Simple be more than just another interchangeable entrant in a category where differentiation is increasingly being determined on the basis of experience quality, retention, and trust far more so than just pure feature checklists.
Inside Simple’s Business Model and Key Metrics
Under the hood, Avo is powered by large language models with memory for longitudinal context – this means that the coach can remember a user’s past goals alongside tone preference, and dietary habits. The company indicates that each dialogue and meal log is contributing to a feedback learning system feeding individual profiles while refining cohort-level recommendations – in short, personalization increases as engagement grows.
The topline numbers also suggest promising unit economics. At about $160 million in ARR and 700,000 subscribers, Simple’s implied average revenue per subscriber is therefore around $230 per year or so, call it somewhere under $20 per month — smack-dab in the middle of where popular consumer subscriptions land. Management also touts profitability, something seldom seen from consumer health apps that often have to fight with paid acquisition costs and churn.
Simple positions itself against Noom, WeightWatchers and MyFitnessPal by emphasizing coaching over tracking and by steering clear of a telehealth pharmacy model directly. But instead of a directions-for-use note on the side of a box of GLP-1s, the app markets itself as a “behavior engine” that can sustain habits whether or not a user elects to take medication — an increasingly strategic lane as rivals veer deeper into clinical services.
The Competitive and Legal Context for AI Coaching
The competitive bar is rising. WeightWatchers bought a telehealth platform called Sequence to deliver GLP-1 prescriptions with its behavioral program, and the weight-loss app Noom recently launched a version, dubbed Noom Med, that will integrate medical pathways with coaching. Food logging and macro tracking are still ruled by MyFitnessPal. In this world where engagement metrics — daily active use, response rates to coaching, sustained weight change — matter more than download counts.
There is also increasing evidence for behavior-first strategies. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force supports intensive behavioral interventions for adults with obesity and research that the National Institutes of Health lists suggests that sustained weight loss of 5 to 10 percent can make a real difference in cardiometabolic risk factors. The challenge for AI is to condense the cost and widen access to such coaching, without watering down effectiveness.
Yet AI in health invites scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission has cautioned companies against overselling the capabilities of AI, and expectations of data privacy are high even when products are not delivering diagnosis or treatment. In Europe, the AI Act will raise transparency and risk-management standards for systems that shape health-related decisions. For Simple, plain guardrails on claims, data handling and escalation to human support will be key.
What The New Capital Will Be Invested In
Basic plans for broadening GLP-1 companion features, adding women’s health and midlife programs, and slowly moving beyond weight loss into sleep, stress and movement. That road map recognizes how weight management intersects with hormonal shifts, recovery and mental load — all areas where continual, bite-size coaching can thrive.
Enterprise distribution could follow. Employers and health plans are seeking engagement-rich, less expensive alternatives to mitigate cardiometabolic risk. If Simple is able to match strong consumer retention with validated outcomes — via prospective studies or claims-based analyses — they might open the doors to payer partnerships without abandoning their direct-to-consumer DNA.
The big takeaway: a star-studded venture firm just bet on the kind of AI coach with revenue (not just a pre-product concept behind it). With meaningful ARR and a clear differentiation strategy, Simple is entering its next stage with momentum — and the hard reality of demonstrating whether personalized, chat-based guidance can produce lasting health outcomes at scale.
