2025 will be marked in history as an inflection year where healthcare innovation shifted from the hype of "digital transformation" to the truth of tangible clinical and financial outcomes. The result is that the market has bifurcated sharply between over-valued companies that were tech-forward but still chasing product-market fit, versus tech companies with proven unit economics and real-world evidence. The former are facing extended timelines and valuation compression while the latter commanding oversubscribed rounds and premium valuations. We’re excited to see this transition, as it underscores our long-held investment thesis and our selection in portfolio companies.
Three mega trends dominated the most recent quarters, each directly validating Capita3's investment thesis
- The healthcare AI gold rush hit a moment of truth in 2H2025
While AI-focused healthcare ventures captured 62% of digital health funding and commanded 83% valuation premiums over non-AI peers in Q3.2025, investors are now demanding proof of clinical integration and measurable outcomes, not just technical capability. The winners are emerging: AI companies that seamlessly integrate into existing clinical workflows—like ambient documentation tools that crossed the adoption "chasm" faster than any healthcare technology in history—rather than standalone solutions requiring wholesale behavior change.
The market response is definitive: AI must make healthcare workers' lives easier, and AI-powered offerings that require clinicians to add steps to already-overburdened workflows are losing out.
Supporting this shift are infrastructure companies like MDisrupt – an AI powered healthcare expert network company (Capita3 Fund II portfolio company), which embeds clinical, regulatory, and commercial expertise into product development from day one—helping companies build solutions designed for workflow integration rather than retrofitting clinical validation after launch.
Expert Networks as Critical Infrastructure
Perhaps the most underappreciated trend is the emergence of expert networks like MDisrupt as critical healthcare infrastructure. Historically, the top startups are typically surrounded by expert advisors or Board members; however, as tech founders outside of healthcare dominated offerings in recent years, the focus on adoptable healthcare solutions took a back seat to tech forward approaches. As innovation accelerates, the bottleneck isn't ideas, it's validating those ideas with clinicians, payers, and patients for rapid iteration to product-market fit. Companies building this connective tissue are positioning themselves as the "picks and shovels" of healthcare transformation and receiving strong market reception.
- Environmental Health Goes Mainstream
The $2 billion New Jersey PFAS settlement in Q3 wasn't just a headline, it was a forcing function that transformed environmental health from a "nice to have" to a Board-level imperative. Industrial manufacturers are now racing to secure permanent PFAS destruction capabilities before the next wave of litigation hits. This created a first-mover advantage window that companies like Capita3 portfolio company Claros Technologies are capitalizing on. More broadly, the intersection of environmental toxins and human health is finally getting serious capital attention. Investors are recognizing that cleaning up "forever chemicals" isn't just environmental activism, it's preventive healthcare at scale, with massive a market and regulatory tailwinds.
- Women and Family Health: From Underfunded to Unstoppable
Women and family health experienced a watershed moment in 2025 with three converging catalysts:
Regulatory Tailwinds: CMS launched the Transforming Maternal Health (TMaH) model with $17 million allocated to each of 15 states over 10 years. The model requires doula coverage in participating states by 2027 and supports expansion of midwifery and birth centers—the fastest federal adoption of maternal health policy in a decade. This creates clear reimbursement pathways for companies like Flourish Care (Capita3 portfolio company), transforming doulas from optional services into mandated Medicaid benefits. This represents a major tailwind for Flourish.
Consumer Awakening: The infant microbiome market is projected to reach $5B by 2030, driven by millennial parents armed with research and seeking science-backed solutions. Persephone Bioscience's Nature publication showing 76% of U.S. infants are deficient in critical gut bacteria landed at the right moment in this awareness curve and was the most-read scientific article of this year at that time. Gabbi exemplifies the winning formula: meet the consumer where she is. By partnering with employers, health systems, and providers to deliver breast cancer risk assessment directly to health-conscious women, they're finding product-market fit faster than those trying to change hospital workflows.
What This Means for Capita3 Portfolio
The convergence of regulatory support, proven ROI metrics, and genuine consumer demand isn't coming—it's here. The companies that built real products, generated real data, and earned real trust are now in pole position to capture category-defining outcomes.
We’re seeing strong portfolio company performance in 2025 because we selected companies that were positioned at the intersection of these trends and catalyzing factors. The performance of our companies reflects the fact that they built real products, generated real data, and earned real trust.. In summary:
- Gabbii partners with health systems, employers and providers to assess risk, getting women to the right care quickly
- FlyteHealth has proven their value in obesity care and has expanded to the more holistic cardiometabolic care paradigm
- Flourish Health and Persephone Biosciences are leveraging the women's health reimbursement and consumer awareness surge
- Claros Technologies timed the PFAS regulatory wave at exactly the right moment and is capitalizing on media attention to accelerate company value
- MDisrupt is the infrastructure layer for healthcare innovation validation through its marketplace of experts and easy to use AI-powered expert matching engine.
The healthcare innovation narrative is shifting from "what's possible" to "what's provable." And our portfolio is delivering the proof. We’re excited to see them continue their work in 2026.
