Insights / Activity
Field notes on M&A in healthcare — the deal logic, integration realities, and what separates successful acquisitions from value-destroying ones.
13 posts in M&A / Acquisitions
1 Sept 2026 · 3 min read
Sword Health is acquiring Headspace for a reported $200–300 million — roughly 90% below its 2021 peak valuation of $3 billion. I see this deal as a signal that digital health is entering a more mature phase of consolidation.
27 Aug 2026 · 2 min read
Lindus Health sold its CRO business on August 18 and became Lindus Therapeutics — and I think the move exposes a structural problem in the neo-CRO model: the sponsor captures most of the upside from a faster trial, while the CRO collects a fee.
23 Jul 2026 · 1 min read
Tempus AI's $1.5B acquisition of Personalis, coming two months after the FDA approved atezolizumab with Signatera as companion diagnostic, looks to me like a bet on longitudinal patient data rather than current test volume—though I'm skeptical about how fast Personalis can replicate that regulatory path.
30 Jun 2026 · 1 min read
John Jumper, the Nobel laureate behind AlphaFold, is leaving Google DeepMind for Anthropic — and when I read that move next to Anthropic's recent acquisitions, partnerships, and research hires, it's the direct research talent, not the board appointments, that will shape where this company lands in life sciences.
7 Apr 2026 · 4 min read
Most coverage frames the Coefficient Bio acquisition as a valuation story: $44M per head, a 38,000% return, eight months old, no product, no revenue. All true. All missing the point. Anthropic bought the scientific decision layer.
23 Mar 2026 · 3 min read
Verily raised $300M, ended Alphabet’s controlling stake, and changed its legal name to Verily Health Inc. The capital matters. The structural change matters more. In healthcare, ownership structure is part of the product. As a personal anecdote, I stopped using my Fitbit the moment Google took over.
17 Feb 2026 · 2 min read
Barely a month goes by without another billion-dollar AI discovery deal. But Takeda’s deal with Iambic isn’t about buying AI — it’s about acquiring binding intelligence. If it works, portfolio strategy shifts from option value through volume to option value through precision. The hard part is industrializing it.
6 Jan 2026 · 2 min read
Insilico Medicine closed 2025 with a ~US$293M HKEX IPO and opened 2026 with an $888M oncology collaboration with Servier — two major pharma deals in two months that suggest repeatable demand for their AI drug discovery platform.
28 Aug 2025 · 1 min read
Consolidation in healthcare AI is inevitable, but the $81M acquisition price of Paige AI by Tempus AI — after raising over $260M and once valued at $600M — is a sobering reminder that building a great product and figuring out how to monetize it are two very different challenges.
16 Jun 2025 · 1 min read
Anne Wojcicki's company TTAM has outbid Regeneron with a $305M offer to buy back 23andMe's assets — and I'm intrigued about where this goes next.
22 Aug 2024 · 1 min read
I'm not entirely surprised by the buzz around Roche potentially selling Flatiron — transitioning to a truly data-driven, RWE-focused business model is no small feat for large pharma, and the bigger question is who will ultimately lead the large-scale RWE and curated healthcare data space.
11 Jul 2024 · 1 min read
I flagged some encouraging digital health investment stats recently, but a key leading indicator — how much VCs are raising for their funds — is not looking great, across all domains. Without a trend breaker in IPO and M&A exit opportunities, it will become even harder for healthtech companies to raise money in the future.
28 Jun 2024 · 1 min read
It is really fascinating to see how Amazon is iterating its way into healthcare. After many failed attempts, the acquisition pathway using One Medical as a platform — combined with a continuously improving online pharmacy model — seems to be working.