Pomelo Care just closed a $92M Series C at a $1.7B valuation, and this one lands different. Not louder. Not softer. Sharper. This is what happens when clinical evidence, payer economics, and operational discipline stop circling each other and finally lock in. Healthcare usually improvises. Pomelo Care moves in time.
Founded in 2021 by Marta Bralic Kerns, Pomelo Care stepped into a system where women and children were expected to navigate fragmented care like it was a character-building exercise. Instead of asking patients to hustle harder, Pomelo Care built infrastructure that does the heavy lifting, pairing data science with clinicians who are present, accountable, and always on.
25M covered lives is not a vanity metric. Nearly 7% of all U.S. births flowing through one care model is not a slide deck flex. That is national gravity. 46 states. More than 1 in 6 Medicaid beneficiaries. This is scale that shifts how policy makers, payers, and employers think, not just how investors talk.
The outcomes read like a direct response to decades of broken incentives. Preterm births down 37%. ER visits down 46%. NICU stays shortened by an average of 6.8 days, stretching to 16.3 days in complex cases. Total cost of care down 8.8%, delivering a 3–5x ROI to health plans that are used to hearing promises, not seeing proof.
Mental health did not get parked on the sidelines. Prenatal depression screening rates jumped 700%+. Patients with moderate to severe symptoms moved meaningfully in weeks, not quarters. Equity was not treated like a branding exercise either. Black patients at risk for preeclampsia saw aspirin prophylaxis initiation increase more than 500%. That is not storytelling. That is systems design.
The September 2024 acquisition of The Doula Network added what software alone never can. Human presence. In network. In person. At national scale. Elizabeth Simmons brought the largest credentialed doula network into a model already built on outcomes, not anecdotes, creating a hybrid approach that finally respects both data and delivery.
Leadership matters when complexity stacks fast. Marta Bralic Kerns is joined by Isabelle Von Kohorn as CMO, Shyamali Choudhury as Chief Commercial Officer, and Sarah Kramarz as COO. This is a team designed to operate at scale, not chase applause between funding rounds.
Stripes led the Series C, with Andreessen Horowitz, PLUS Capital, Atomico, BoxGroup, and SV Angel doubling down. The same names keep reappearing for a reason. Pomelo Care does not sell hope. Pomelo Care sells evidence, priced to risk, validated in the real world.
Startups Startup Funding Venture Capital Series C Digital Health Maternal Health Mental Health Healthcare Health Tech Infrastructure Data Data Driven Technology Innovation Tech Ecosystem Startup Ecosystem DCTalks
