Cake Raises $3.7 Million to Expand End-of-Life Planning Offerings Amidst Growing Demand

Serving More Than 30 Million People per Year, Cake Has Emerged As World’s Largest Online Platform for End-of-Life Planning

Cake, the world’s largest online platform for end-of-life planning and navigating mortality, announced an oversubscribed round of $3.7 million in funding from new investors including AARP, InHealth Ventures (IHV), Two Lanterns, Portfolia’s Aging and Longevity Fund, Scrum Ventures, Reflect Ventures, and existing investors GoAhead Ventures, Pillar, and OCA Ventures. Cake also received investments from prominent angel investors including Arnold Whitman, Bill Hambrecht, and Betsy Hambrecht.

“The pandemic sped up existing trends in consumer views on end-of-life,” says Suelin Chen, Cake’s CEO. “We’ve seen increased demand and decreased stigma around end-of-life topics. This has not only led to spiking consumer engagement but also a surge of interest from enterprises that serve these consumers and view end-of-life planning as an essential part of people’s health and financial well-being.”

Cake is the first company to use AI and NLP technology at scale to improve the user experience in end-of-life planning. In a year where health issues and racial inequities were brought to light, Cake led the industry in providing end-of-life planning resources that addressed racial equity. As such, the company’s reach skyrocketed, growing more than 10x last year, and serving more than 30 million people annually.

In addition to consumer-facing tools, Cake also has a business line building custom advance care and end-of-life planning solutions for health systems, health plans, insurance companies, and banks, including one of the largest health systems in the US. These customers find that offering self-serve digital end-of-life tools to consumers improves impressions of their brand, provides opportunities to educate and engage and deepens their relationship with consumers. For healthcare customers, increasing advance care planning can improve care and satisfaction for patients and families, and prevent inappropriate care from being delivered.

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“We invested in Cake because of their traction in a massive category that impacts every human being,” says Ben Evans from InHealth Ventures. “Advance care and end-of-life planning are essential for the health and financial well-being of both individuals and organizations, and we see Cake leading solutions for honoring life from beginning to end.”

“At Scrum, we realize opportunities for innovation in fragmented categories composed of various point solutions, which is the case for end-of-life planning,” said Ryan Mendoza, Partner with Scrum Ventures. “Cake consolidates services and educates to provide a seamless experience to people struggling with hardship. We are very excited about future iterations of Cake’s product, moving upstream into ‘near-death’ planning, and using AI to improve the user experience, and becoming the central tool for this market.”

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