Healthier Capital, founded by former One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin, beat its fundraising goal to pick up $220 million for its debut healthcare technology fund.
Fund 1 participants include universities, endowments, family offices, healthcare organizations and other investors, the company said.
The venture fund closed the oversubscribed round—significantly above its $150 million target—despite limited partners pulling back from venture capital. Fundraising for the global venture capital industry hit an eight-year low in 2025, dropping 38% from 2024, Venture Capital Journal reported.
Rubin says Healthier Capital has built a leadership team with deep healthcare expertise spanning the ecosystem, which helps sell investors on the fund. The VC firm was built by operators who have run hospitals and healthcare providers, held key leadership positions at companies like CVS Health and Aetna, led major healthcare M&A deals and have served as researchers and educators in leading institutions, he noted.
"As one of our entrepreneurs said, 'They've been there, done that in health tech.' Our team has been around in healthcare," Rubin told Fierce Healthcare in an interview. "We've got great enthusiasm from investors."
Rubin was the CEO of primary care company One Medical for six years, which went public in 2020 and then was acquired by Amazon for $3.9 billion in 2023. His resume also includes serving as executive vice president and divisional CEO of UnitedHealth Group's Optum division, CEO at Stanford University’s health system, chief operating officer at UCLA’s health system and COO at SUNY Stony Brook’s health system.
Healthier Capital Partner Gregor Kevrekian had stints at CVS Health as head of corporate development where he led acquisitions of Oak Street Health and Signify Health. He also led Aetna’s corporate venture fund, focusing on tech-enabled healthcare services, and served on the deal team during CVS Health’s $78 billion acquisition of Aetna.
Partner Eric Epstein was a partner at Santé Ventures and brings experience in operations improvement and strategy from his days in healthcare consulting at McKinsey & Company in Silicon Valley. Aman Mahajan, M.D., Ph.D., also a partner at the firm, is an inventor and founder of health technology and digital health platforms as well as a recognized physician-scientist and clinical leader. Mahajan previously served as a senior executive at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as well as endowed professor and chair of the department of anesthesiology at UCLA Health.
Limited partners, entrepreneurs and co-investors see that extensive experience, Rubin said. "We took companies public, we had sales to strategics, we bought companies, we've invested and we've been in this industry for decades. We regularly are engaging with health systems, health plans, health benefit leaders, technology companies, life sciences companies, and we've been doing this throughout our careers. So, we could bring that insight and that network to bear with the entrepreneurs. I think our LPs, our investors, see that, and I think the healthcare ecosystem sees that," he said.
"We want healthcare to work better for everyone, so we spend a lot of time with health systems and health plans and clinicians and life sciences companies. I think on that end, those organizations see us as, and we like to be seen as, almost partners in their innovation efforts."
He added, "We're spending our time on the startup world and how modern AI and technologies can work in healthcare, but we also understand the existing ecosystem, which is critically important. We're going to need doctors and nurses and insurance and medical groups and health benefits leaders and so understanding how these things might fit together is really a unique role we can play."
Healthier Capital has made nine investments to date, and the firm focuses primarily on early-stage companies including artificial-intelligence-driven diagnostics, care delivery and clinical workflow platforms. The firm has already had one exit—portfolio company Ezra, which provides full-body scans, was acquired by Function Health last year.
"Many of our companies have already had subsequent up-rounds. I think we're off to the races," Rubin said.
Healthier Capital is focused on "delivering healthier outcomes for all, partnering with technology-powered innovators to deliver transformative impact and significant value creation," according to Rubin.
"We are looking at the problems of the key stakeholders in healthcare and trying to solve those with innovative technology-powered models. If you look at all the key stakeholders in healthcare, they're all frustrated with the current state," he noted. "On the demand side of things, consumers are frustrated with their experience and their wait times and their access. Those who are paying for care, employers and payers, are frustrated with medical inflation and the waste in healthcare, but also on the supply side, we see frustrations. You see burnout in clinicians. You see workforce shortages. You see challenges in coordinating care and building integrated health networks, in pulling disparate datasets together."
Healthier Capital invests in startups that are trying to tackle those challenges with tech-enabled approaches that drive impact, he noted.
"For consumers, how do we deliver better consumer experience and access? For employers and payers, how do we innovate on clinical services and look for greater care value? And then on the supply side of healthcare, how do we look for administrative and clinical automation, and how do we leverage software and technology to coordinate and integrate data and care and deliver better outcomes for all?"
On the consumer side, Rubin points to Ezra, which debuted in 2018 as a healthcare AI company that offers full-body magnetic resonance imaging scans. Ezra’s vision is to make full-body MRI scans fast, accurate and affordable.
Healthier Capital's portfolio includes Daymark Health, a company providing tech-driven cancer care coordination; Amae Health, which provides integrated care for severe mental illness; Octave, a modern behavioral health practice; and Zarminali Pediatrics, a pediatric provider building integrated primary and specialty care, which just raised a $110 million series A funding round.
The firm also invests in startups that use AI and automation to tackle administrative and clinical workflows. Hyro built conversational AI agents for healthcare, and Qualified Health is developing AI infrastructure for healthcare. Other companies in the portfolio include Medeloop, an AI-powered research platform for life sciences, and Diploid Genomics, which uses AI to better understand genomic sequences.
There is a lot of noise in the market around AI. Healthier Capital looks for startups using AI and innovative technologies to solve real pain points for stakeholders, Rubin noted.
"People don't want to buy AI, they want to buy a solution to their problem. And then, we often have to think about, 'Is this a big enough opportunity? What is the market and how is this differentiated? How would you go about selling this? How would you integrate this data? How would it sit along claims systems or EHR systems or benefit systems or other workflow drivers? And then, how well can these companies execute and scale on that?' It's really the combination of those things that we look at," he said.
"Of course, valuation and price are important. What might be the ultimate disposition of these companies over time? Is this something that can be acquired, go public or merge? Given our experience at all of these stages, from starting companies and running startups to buying them and exiting, we think along all that. And we're diligencing the technology. At One Medical and with my colleagues, we built software, we built AI models and machine learning models. We've been working in these arenas for a while."
As the healthcare system faces seismic shifts as the result of regulatory and policy changes, an evolving consumer market and financial pressures, Rubin believes this will spur increased investments in tech-enabled solutions.
"There is change and a need for change, and call to actions for change. I think that creates opportunities. We're working with our portfolio companies and some health systems. We talked to one of them who said, 'We want to leverage AI to find a billion dollars in opportunity over the next five years.' They said. 'We need it. We can't find the people. Our finances can't sustain it, and we think that technology can help us automate workflow and remove the grunt work off of our clinicians and create more access.'"
At the same time, consumers want better access to healthcare services and better experiences while employers are looking for solutions to manage rising healthcare costs. There also are policy tailwinds for health tech innovation. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation's recently announced ACCESS model will test an alternative payment model for tech-supported chronic care.
"I think there's a lot of momentum, and we have these amazing new technologies. I think we're in a transformative period for a lot of industries and certainly for healthcare," Rubin said.