Nourish, a metabolism provider focused on virtual nutrition, has raised $100 million in a Series C round.
The round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Thrive Capital, Index Ventures, JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Maverick Ventures, Y Combinator and others. The funding will be used to expand Nourish’s provider workforce, accelerate investments in AI, and deepen partnerships with payers and health systems.
The company is pivoting from a dietitian-only nutrition platform to a more comprehensive metabolic health clinic by hiring physicians. Nourish patients are typically paired with a registered dietitian, but lab tests, GLP-1 prescriptions, and other virtual care are now also available. There is currently a waiting list for Nourish doctor visits, but executives say the goal is to rapidly expand by the end of this year to meet “overwhelming demand.”
“Since we started, the vision has always been how to combine a virtual care team to facilitate lifestyle changes with AI to be a 24/7 coach to help with behavioral changes through medication,” Nourish co-founder and CEO Aidan Dewar told Fierce Healthcare in an advanced interview. “We have always believed that to maximize scale and outcomes, we need an integrated care team.”
Approximately half of American adults have one or more preventable chronic diseases, many of which are diet-related, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer. One million people die each year in the United States from chronic diet-related diseases.
Historically, Nourish has referred patients outside for needs beyond nutritional counseling. At the beginning of this year, we began implementing in-house laboratory testing. Expanding the physician care team is a logical next step and something health system partners have also requested, executives said.
“Most people don’t have the ability to provide the virtual metabolic clinic that we’re talking about,” Dewar said. “With the new capital, we intend to make further significant investments to expand our scale.”
Technology has been at the core of Nourish since its inception. All patients have access to an AI health agent 24/7 to assist with scheduling, test interpretation, meal planning, coaching, and more. Nourish’s mobile app AI agent has hundreds of thousands of monthly active users, according to Dewar. “We’re seeing it actually deliver amazing clinical results,” Dewar said of the AI tool.
For healthcare providers, Nourish also includes AI components such as a scribe, a research assistant, a messaging tool, and a co-pilot agent that recommends treatment options based on millions of past clinical experiences. Dewar believes in keeping humans informed and is excited to continue investing in AI, as the company is “already seeing incredible results.”
Previously, Nourish offered a GLP-1 program to support patients taking medications through nutritional counseling, but the company was unable to provide prescriptions until it recently began hiring physicians. According to Dewar, about 15% of Nourish patients are currently taking GLP-1. Nourish is focused on brand-name GLP-1, which it aims to offer through insurance coverage or at cost, indicating Nourish is not trying to increase the price of its drugs, Dewar said. It helps build trust with patients.
“We don’t make money on drugs, so we can be the most responsible prescribers on the market.” Dewar also said the goal should be to combine drugs with lifestyle changes and ultimately get off drugs, noting that “without behavioral changes, these drugs will not produce sustainable results.”
Through its GLP-1 companion program, Nourish has delivered positive results. Patients taking GLP-1 and those not taking Nourish had better weight loss results compared to those not taking Nourish, a 2024 peer-reviewed analysis found. Among patients taking GLP-1, Nourish patients experienced 33% greater weight loss than non-Nourish patients. Additionally, 63% of Nourish GLP-1 patients reported improvement in side effects after working with a registered dietitian. Nourish patients also reported higher compliance rates.
According to Dewar, Nourish has grown to more than 10,000 registered dietitians in the four years since its founding, and is expected to be profitable by 2025. The latest funding raised a total of $215 million. Today, its payer partnerships cover more than 200 million lives and more than 250 health systems refer patients to Nourish. Demand is growing, Dewar said. Nourish saves payers more than $2,000 per patient per year, the company claims.
Recently, Nourish began partnering more directly with employers for advertising to ensure members know that Nourish is available to them. Dewar did not identify specific employers, but said Nourish works with the largest number of payer contacts.
“This is one of the most important issues to address in the world,” Dewar said. “Given the magnitude of the problem, solutions are needed.”
