Welcome to the third annual SOSV Human Health 100. The list features SOSV’s 100 most exciting companies in the health category, which for SOSV ranges very widely, from assistive robotics and remote care to therapeutics and diagnostics.
In the past two years (see the 2023 and 2022 lists), venture rounds and company valuations grew strongly, but in the past year funding has become much harder to secure and valuations are fragile at best. We asked founders in our recently concluded and very well attended VC-Founder Health Matchup (more on that below) what they thought of the funding environment: 71% reported that it was worse than prior years; no respondent reported it was better.
We see that trend in our Health 100. As in past years, about 2/3 of the companies are at the seed stage, 1/3 at Series A or more, and 2 have reached ‘Late stage’ (unicorns Opentrons and Formlabs). Compared to the strong numbers the Health 100 posted in the past two years, growth was modest. The Health 100’s aggregate valuation is $6.67 billion (+3% from $5.47B in 2023), and all told the Health 100 have raised $1.43 billion (+1% from $1.42B in 2023).
SOSV, which invests starting at pre-seed and continues through later stages, has invested $99 million (+3% from $96M in 2023) in the 100. Due to the slowdown in follow-on investing last year, SOSV’s investments were mostly in new companies entering our programs or raising seed rounds.