January AI Raises $21 Million to Fuel Growth of Its Breakthrough Diabetes Management Technology

Health tech startup combines real-time glucose monitoring and personalized machine learning to accurately track and predict the effects of diet, exercise, and sleep on health

January AI—the first metabolic health company that accurately predicts users’ glycemic response to over 16 million foods in its proprietary atlas—announced that it has raised $8.8M in new funding from visionary institutional and individual investors, bringing its total capital raised to $21M.

Felicis Ventures, a venture fund with a history of investing in notable consumer health and wellness disruptors, including Fitbit and Modern Health, participated in the round along with HAND Capital and Marc Benioff. They join existing seed investors AME Cloud Ventures and SignalFire, along with YouTube Co-Founder Steve Chen, Sunshine Co-Founder Marissa Mayer, Grail Co-Founder and former Illumina CTO Mostafa Ronaghi, Home Care Assistance Chairman Lily Sarafan, and Oracle veteran Gary Kennedy.

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“We’re thrilled to join with this incredible team of leaders in technology and venture to bring January AI to millions of Americans with or at risk of developing diabetes,” said Noosheen Hashemi, Founder and CEO of January AI. “We believe that every day can feel like January 1st—a day to take a fresh start towards better health—and that self-improvement is a team sport. Additionally, we’re excited to expand our footprint into enterprise, including pharma, where we already have a paying customer. With these partners and our growing team of advisors, we can unlock the power of personalized self-care for consumers wanting to take control of their health.”

The funding will be used to fill key hires across product, engineering, and operations, and accelerate sign-ups for its complete metabolic health program, Season of Me, which includes a telehealth screening with a licensed physician, 2 continuous glucose monitors (CGM), and a 90-day membership to the January app. By giving wearers personalized insights on how diet, exercise, and sleep affect their blood sugar in real-time, Season of Me can help people across the diabetes spectrum build better habits towards living healthier lives.

Backed by 3 years of rigorous scientific research, January AI came out of stealth last summer with its algorithm poster at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions Conference, presenting its CGM prediction technology following a 1,000-person clinical study. Results showed that after 4 days of input, January’s proprietary algorithm learned an individualized model for each participant, enabling accurate prediction of glucose responses from foods logged. By predicting blood sugar “spikers,” offering lower glycemic load food alternatives, and recommending the precise amount of activity needed to bring down their glucose curve, in just 10 days, over 70% of participants improved their time-in-range or the amount of time their blood glucose remained within a healthy target zone.

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“While other companies have made headway in understanding biometric sensor data—from heart rate and glucose monitors, for example—January AI has made progress in analyzing and predicting the effects of food consumption itself. Understanding what people eat is key to addressing metabolic health and chronic disease. Aggregating a food atlas of 16 million items, including local restaurant menus, January AI has used machine learning to create nutritional labels and glycemic index for everyday foods Americans eat, turning food into actionable health data,” said Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner at Felicis Ventures. “We look forward to seeing Noosheen Hashemi and the January AI team advance this idea, and leverage their growing network of scientists to help people prevent and manage the chronic diseases that are increasingly prevalent in our communities.”

“January’s unique technology has the potential to connect the dots for people on the diabetes spectrum—to better understand the power of food to hurt or to heal, and to give them greater control over their choices,” said Jerry Yang, Founding Partner of AME Cloud Ventures, Co-Founder of Yahoo!.

Solving a dire, $327B American public health problem:

• Currently, 122 million Americans—half of the US adult population—have diabetes or prediabetes, with double digit growth projected over the next decade.
• Diabetes is the most expensive chronic condition in our nation, with $1 out of every $7 in the US healthcare system spent on diabetes care.
• The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted how vulnerable this population is. According to the CDC, nearly 40% of Americans who’ve died of Covid-19 had diabetes.

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