Quantified Self: Levels Raises $38 Million to Solve Metabolic Health Crisis

We can’t help but be excited for the future of aging science as longevity-focused Biotech companies continue to raise billions of dollars in funding.

But for all of this capital, research, and brain-power entering the field, solutions for reversing aging, or even extending lifespan, are years away.

R&D… animal trials… human trials…

Although the research is promising, your average person doesn’t want to sit on their hands and wait… they want to get involved today.

Enter digital health companies that are putting the power in the consumers’ hands by measuring and reporting how specific biomarkers can lead to better healthspan, and potentially lifespan.

This week, Levels, a software company that gives real-time feedback on how food affects a person’s health, announced the raise of $38 million in Series A funding at a $300 million valuation.

A Tiny Lab on Your Arm

Each and every person has different needs when it comes to their health, but until the last few years, we didn’t have the technology available to continuously track how small changes to our eating, sleeping, or exercise habits impact our day-to-day health. The keyword being… “continuously.”

Fitness, sleep, and stress trackers were a step in the right direction, but all of them were external trackers. When these devices first started to roll out, none of them, for example, gave people insight into how food impacted their internal health in real-time.

That’s why interest is building among longevity enthusiasts around internal biomarker tracking. Companies like Levels have responded by introducing continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), which Dr. Casey Means, a co-founder of Levels calls a “tiny lab on our arms.”

How’s it Work?

A CGM is a small monitoring device that sticks to the back of your arm to measure glucose values at all times. The sensor then takes in data about how your day-to-day activities influence your glucose levels and provides you with the information needed to make health and lifestyle changes.

Who Else is Investing in CGMs?

This Series A funding for Levels highlights what spannr believes to be one of the hottest areas of longevity for 2022. We’ve already seen hundreds of millions of dollars flow into the space, as well as a few strategic M&A moves.

• Nutrisense, which according to insiders has raised around $6 million to date
• January AI, which has raised $29.8 million in funding to date
• Signos, which has raised $17 million in funding over three rounds
• Supersapiens, which has raised $13.5 million in funding, but is not currently available in the US
• Ultrahuman, which has raised more than $25 million and earlier this month acquired LazyCo, the creator of the Aina ring

Although right now there isn’t a ton of differentiation between companies beyond professional support, we would expect these competitors to begin offering support for other biomarkers such as A1C, lipid panels, and more.

We also expect to see M&A soon as traditional hardware providers in the health space want to expand their offerings. We saw this recently with Eight Sleep acquiring Span.Health.

Although none of these companies are able to directly stop or reverse aging, they are putting the power into the hands of the consumers to begin to better understand their health and push for longevity-related changes.