Strive Health Secures $550M to Expand AI Tools and Specialty Care

The funding includes a $300 million series D equity round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and $250 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital.

Strive Health, a value-based kidney care company, has raised $550 million to expand its artificial intelligence tools and broaden specialty services.

The funding includes a $300 million series D equity round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and $250 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. Additional equity investments came from CVS Health Ventures, CapitalG, Echo Health Ventures, Town Hall Ventures, Redpoint, and new institutional investors, including funds managed by affiliates of BlackRock.

The new round brings Strive’s total funding to $700 million and raises its valuation to $1.8 billion.

Founded in 2018, the company now cares for over 145,000 people with kidney disease and partners with more than 6,500 providers nationwide, managing nearly $5 billion in annual medical spend. Strive has also expanded its focus beyond kidney care to conditions like congestive heart failure.

Chris Riopelle, co-founder and CEO of Strive Health, said, "What's different about us is we integrate into the physician community. We're integrated with more than 6,500 providers, 700 of whom are nephrologists with whom we have some form of arrangement, either through the KCC (CMMI Kidney Care Choices) program or just through our local integration and market. We believe, and I think our success is proving it out, that when you integrate in the community where the care is being delivered, you can have a bigger impact on the patient journey."

The company’s care model pairs patients with a “kidney hero” team, including nurse practitioners, case managers, social workers, dieticians, and pharmacists. Riopelle noted, "This team is responsible for a patient and is coordinating and activating care. We're not the cardiologist, but we're making sure they go to the cardiologist and they follow up with the treatment plan that the cardiologist is engaged with. We aren't the nephrologist, but we are co-located, in some cases, and partner with nephrologists to make sure that we're delivering incremental care."

Strive said it plans to use the fresh funding to advance predictive and generative AI applications across care delivery and administration.

Riopelle added, "We have been investing in AI before it was cool… every part of our business, both in care delivery, administration, and making my kidney heroes' jobs more efficient and effective, we're seeing huge improvements."

He further stated, "This capital will allow us to accelerate technology investments and will also allow us to accelerate the buildout of other comorbid condition management. We manage a lot of congestive heart failure patients today, and so we continue to invest in our clinical model around those patients."

Riopelle also emphasized the broader shift, saying, "Our country needs to have a stable and flourishing value-based care ecosystem to continue to manage this incredibly large annual spend. I think value-based care is without a doubt here to stay in terms of specialized populations like kidney disease."

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