This week we learned that Durham-based Bionic Health, which provides AI-driven preventive care plans, has been acquired by Thrive.
Bionic Health (which GrepBeat first wrote about in 2023) was co-founded in 2022 by serial entrepreneurs Robbie Allen and Dr. Jared Pelo and launched on the back of a $3M raise. The company was built to “push medicine upstream,” as Pelo put it, by finding risk early, intervening precisely, and tracking outcomes. Allen added that they sought to “operationalize Medicine 3.0 with real-world results.”
In the three years since Bionic Health’s founding, those goals have translated to comprehensive preventive and longevity care plans. Bionic members undergo advanced (and regular) lab testing; generate continuous data from wearables; enjoy AI-driven insights; and ultimately receive personalized action plans. The startup’s program (dubbed Healthspan) “emphasizes measurable outcomes and sustainable habit change.”
What the startup stands to gain by merging with Thrive—an RTP-based telehealth company with nationwide reach serving fitness clubs and communities—is, primarily, access to a broader market.
“The big challenge for a company like Bionic is distribution,” Allen said in a call on Wednesday. “And one of the angles that we were always interested in was… partnering up with another company that had access to gyms and other, sort of, wellness and fitness distribution angles. And so that’s what Thrive brings to the table.”
Allen noted that in the early days of Bionic, there were “relatively few options” in the marketplace providing the kind of testing and care plans the startup offered. As “longevity” swiftly attained buzzword status, though, the market became crowded and the need for distribution became more urgent.
Even so, he indicated that Thrive has seemed to be a natural partner from the earliest days of Bionic.
“We’ve been talking to [Thrive] from the beginning,” Allen noted, adding that the interest had always been mutual. “It was just a matter of timing and when it made the most sense, and now is that time.”
As for what the new partnership means for members, both Pelo and Allen suggested that the merger is more about scaling Healthspan than changing the outlook for current members. While certain specific offerings such as medical weight loss (GLP-1 therapies) and HRT will be more widely available under the new partnership, the chief benefit is that Bionic’s existing services will reach a wider audience.
“It’s really that ability to take the great service offering that we’ve created with Bionic and get it in front of more people,” Allen said.
Following the deal (for which financial details have not been disclosed), Dr. Pelo will stay on as CEO of the merged entity.
Allen will be moving on and continuing his work as Founder and Managing Director of Automated Consulting Group. In this capacity, he plans to be “helping companies on the AI side” and has already been receiving inquiries.
The serial entrepreneur tantalizingly hinted that he’ll be sharing more details in the near future.
In the meantime, what he and Dr. Pelo built with Bionic Health will live on and expand as part of Thrive.
