- Nourish just raised $70 million in Series B funding led by JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners.
- Nourish connects patients with dietitians for virtual, insurance-covered nutritional care.
- The raise catapulted Nourish's valuation over $1 billion, per people familiar with the efforts.
The nutrition care market is exploding as weight-loss drugs like Ozempic bring rising costs to health insurers and patients alike.
Healthcare startup Nourish is at the forefront of that wave — and it just catapulted to unicorn status with a fresh infusion of cash.
Nourish has raised a $70 million Series B round led by JP Morgan's growth equity investment division, Business Insider learned exclusively.
The Series B included new investors Atomico, G Squared, and PineGrove Venture Partners, alongside returning backers Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Y Combinator, and BoxGroup.
Four people with knowledge of the round said the Series B put Nourish's valuation over $1 billion. The company declined to comment on its valuation.
Nourish connects patients with registered dietitians for virtual, insurance-covered nutritional care, a space that's seeing huge momentum as payers grapple with the costs and limitations of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
CEO Aidan Dewar told BI that demand from health plans and patients has surged in the past year as weight-loss costs collide with the already escalating healthcare spend on chronic conditions — and meet an increasing consumer interest in health and wellness.
"All of these things have led to patients taking their health into their own hands, and patients and payers both looking for solutions like this," Dewar said.
Since its founding in 2021, Nourish has raised $115 million. But it didn't technically need to raise the JP Morgan-led Series B round, Dewar said — Nourish is now profitable, a rarity for a fast-growing digital health startup. Dewar said the startup hasn't touched any of its Series A capital, either.
Paris Heymann, co-managing partner at JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners, first invested in Nourish's Series A when he was a partner at Index Ventures. Index led Nourish's $35 million Series A in March 2024.
When Heymann left Index in October, Nourish was one of the top-performing companies in the firm's portfolio.
JP Morgan's growth equity arm has made 13 investments to date. Nourish is their first digital health investment.
"This is one of the fastest-growing companies we've seen at scale in a long time," Heymann said.
The perfect storm for a nutrition care boom
Nourish got its start in 2021, when childhood friends Dewar and COO Sam Perkins, along with Perkins' college friend CTO Stephanie Liu, set out to solve a problem they'd each faced firsthand. Dewar had struggled with migraines for years. Perkins dealt with irritable bowel syndrome. Traditional healthcare hadn't helped much — but nutrition care had.
"We realized it wasn't just things like migraines or GI issues that are downstream of what you eat, but some of the most prevalent, costly, and deadly conditions are downstream of nutrition," Dewar said.
Today, Nourish says it's built the largest nutrition care platform on the market, with more than 3,000 registered dietitians on staff.
The startup has landed dozens of partnerships with health plans, employers, health systems, and provider groups, treating hundreds of thousands of patients to date. About 95% of its patients receive that care entirely covered by insurance.
Nourish isn't the only startup capitalizing on the food-as-medicine boom. Fay Nutrition raised a $60 million Series B round in February led by Goldman Growth Equity, while Culina Health raised a $7.9 million Series A in December, led by Healthworx, the investment arm of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.
Dewar said Nourish sets itself apart, for one, by employing all of its nutritionists directly as W-2 employees rather than contracting them. Contracting providers is a common practice in telehealth, especially for startups like Nourish that offer care in all 50 states. "They're the stars of the show, and we want to treat them as such," Dewar said.
Then there are Nourish's heavy investments in AI. The startup built an in-house electronic medical record to integrate a number of AI tools for dietitians, including capabilities for automating chart notes, prepping clinicians for sessions, summarizing visits, and handling administrative workflows behind the scenes. On the patient side, the Nourish app offers AI-powered meal logging, personalized feedback based on wearable or lab data, and messaging with care teams, plus meal delivery options.
Those investments further help Nourish support patients on GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. Earlier this month, the company launched a GLP-1 companion program that provides nutrition support alongside any prescriptions, plus an "off-ramp" program to help patients taper off the drugs without losing progress.
The company says its GLP-1 patients lose 33% more weight, on average, than patients who take the drugs without its nutrition support, and they're less likely to stop the medication due to side effects. The programs aim to mitigate common complications like muscle loss and bone density decline, and support sustained weight or blood sugar outcomes post-medication.
Late-stage diabetes startups Virta Health and Omada Health have also started offering obesity care in the past year; both startups have published research suggesting their programs can help patients maintain their weight loss after they stop taking GLP-1 drugs.
But Nourish hasn't had much trouble competing with the rest of the startup landscape so far. Dewar said Nourish's growth is still accelerating, and it has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
He said the startup plans to use the Series B capital to keep hiring across its business, including by bringing on more registered dietitians; continue building out its AI capabilities; and notch more partnerships with health plans, employers, and provider groups.
