The health care landscape continues to change at a pace previously unimaginable.

As consumer demands and expectations continue to evolve – accelerated by the pandemic, as well as the fact that tech companies and consumer brands continue to raise the bar for customer experience – it’s essential that health care keeps up.

To ensure that we are positioned for this next wave of personalized, digital, and seamless health care experiences, Cigna has announced an additional $450 million capital investment in Cigna Ventures to drive continuous health care transformation, innovation, and growth. Cigna Ventures seeks to be the strategic venture capital partner of choice and focuses on finding and partnering with heath care startups as they look to become a catalyst for bold new opportunities to make health care more affordable, simple, and predictable. The team works closely with founders and startups to accelerate the growth of their business by providing access to the right people and resources and by enabling differentiated partnership opportunities with Cigna. While strategically aligned to Cigna, the fund maintains the autonomy to make investment decisions with the same rigor and speed of a traditional financial investor.

“Cigna Ventures accelerates Cigna's commitment as the strategic venture capital partner of choice in health care focused on addressing critical market needs for affordability, predictability, and simplicity, so we can bring more personalized, outcomes-focused solutions to market faster.”Tom Richards, senior vice president and global leader of strategy and business development at Cigna

“The $450 million commitment by Cigna enables us to drive innovation beyond our existing core business operations, and incubate new ideas, opportunities and relationships that have the potential for long-term business growth and to provide value to our customers, clients and providers.” Richards said. 

Cigna Ventures will use this new funding to continue to invest in companies that are making groundbreaking progress across three primary pillars: insights and analytics, digital health and experience, and care delivery and enablement.

A Proven Track Record: Investments to Unlock Bold New Opportunities

The initial capital commitment of $250 million to Cigna Ventures enabled 19 direct investments in some of health care’s most innovative companies, including Arcadia, AristaMD, Babyscripts, Buoy Health, Cleerly, Cricket Health, Datavant, Ginger, GNS Healthcare, Octave, Omada, Prognos Health, RecoveryOne and Zerigo Health.  

To better understand the value of these investments for the clients, customers, and communities we serve, look no further than one of most successful stories in Cigna Ventures’ history: MDLIVE.

In 2013, Cigna first worked with MDLIVE to provide virtual urgent care for customers in employer-sponsored plans. In 2018, Cigna Ventures invested in MDLIVE, and partnered to expand access to behavioral health care and later primary care services, starting with wellness screenings and worked closely with their leaders to further enhance their virtual care strategy and capabilities. In 2021, Evernorth, the health services business of Cigna Corporation, announced the acquisition of MDLIVE, creating the opportunity to incorporate MDLIVE’s platform into the Evernorth portfolio and accelerate Cigna’s push to make health care available when and where customers need it.

“The success of our partnership with MDLIVE only excites us to continue to scout the marketplace for other startups and growth-stage companies that are making groundbreaking progress in the accessibility and delivery of health care,” said Richards.

At Cigna, we innovate in multiple ways: continuous improvement innovation; organic, disruptive innovation; innovation through acquisitions; and innovation through partnerships often with Cigna Ventures investments. Cigna Ventures complements Cigna's commitment to health care transformation and innovation by aligning closely with business leaders across the enterprise to understand and prioritize investment opportunities that alleviate pain points and accelerate inorganic growth for the benefit of our stakeholders.

“We take a very proactive approach to partnering and being the partner of choice for the companies that we invest in,” Richards said. “In addition to partnering with these organizations, we also serve on their boards and provide them with expertise and guidance. We have a team of people that are helping these companies commercialize faster and remove some of the ‘large company burden’ that can be challenging for small startup companies.”