The microbiome intelligence platform will use the capital to advance clinical research and interventional studies, expand its healthcare practitioner education, scale its Powered by Tiny B2B platform and accelerate TinyAI, an AI trained on Tiny Health’s dataset of nearly 200,000 microbiome profiles.
“We founded Tiny Health because the science is so impactful, the need is urgent, and no one else was building for the whole lifespan,” said Cheryl Sew Hoy, CEO and founder of Tiny Health. “What started as a solution for my own family has become the infrastructure for an entire industry. This Series B round propels microbiome science as the foundational layer for the next frontier of medicine.”
The round was led by B Capital, bringing the company’s total funding to $46 million. Existing investors Spero Ventures, The Venture City, Overwater Ventures and others participated alongside other new investors including Black Opal Ventures, Denver Ventures, Pave Health Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels and Pari Passu Ventures.
Investing in the microbiome
While scientific awareness of the microbiome is centuries old, the modern microbiome field began to emerge only decades ago, with major public and research investment accelerating in the mid-2000s with the launch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Project.
By the early-to-mid 2010s, the microbiome had begun to attract mainstream venture capital investment, and consumer awareness picked up substantially following major microbiome discoveries and falling sequencing costs. In the latest wave, companies including Tiny Health are focusing on identify functional characteristics such as diversity, resilience and metabolic markers, using new technologies to connect microbiome insights to precision medicine and care.
“We are seeing unprecedented innovation at the intersection of biology, data and AI, creating new opportunities to make healthcare more personalized and proactive,” said Adam Seabrook, partner at B Capital. “Tiny Health has created a differentiated platform that translates rigorous microbiome science into actionable insights that can help fundamentally change how people understand and improve their health across every stage of life.”
Launched in 2022, Tiny Health began by introducing the first gut microbiome test for babies, built on shotgun metagenomic sequencing and grounded in the understanding that an infant’s microbiome is malleable and influences lifelong health. It also provided vaginal and gut microbiome testing services for mothers and now reports that its adult testing has surpassed pediatric testing in volume, reflecting the company’s expanding reach across the full lifespan.
Today, the platform serves nearly 200,000 customers and more than 6,000 healthcare practitioners across independent practices, hospital systems, longevity clinics, consumer health companies and precision medicine organizations.
Announcing the Microbiome Research Program
In addition to the raise, Tiny Health announced the launch of a $5 million Microbiome Research Program to advance microbiome research and close the gap between the science and clinically meaningful practice.
The program seeks to enable researchers, clinicians and scientific partners to leverage Tiny Health’s microbiome testing, data and research capabilities to investigate important intervention strategies in microbiome health.
“Tiny Health believes the next breakthroughs in microbiome science will come from bringing more researchers and institutions into the field,” said Kimberley Sukhum, PhD, chief science officer at Tiny Health. “This investment will help generate new evidence and foster collaborations across the scientific community, building on Tiny Health’s growing body of peer-reviewed research and its commitment to advancing rigorous, accessible microbiome science.”
