Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech’s promise. He’s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.

Function Health, which offers its members nutrition, supplement, and other lifestyle guidance based on lab tests and body scans, announced on Wednesday $298 million in new funding with plans to add artificial intelligence features to help with the interpretation of patient data.

Function’s new fundraise is a reflection of momentum behind a booming wellness industry that the company helped manufacture. Function, based in Austin, Texas, is one of the leading companies marketing preventive care services directly to consumers with emotional advertising that implores watchers to “find out what you’re made of” and that individuals “deserve answers just as unique as they are.” The company’s gospel of self-empowerment has been buttressed in part by co-founder and chief medical officer Mark Hyman’s friendship with health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Since Function started selling a battery of over 100 blood tests in 2023, the market has been flooded with alternatives from other startups. By pointing out the shortcomings of the traditional health care system, these companies have sought to capitalize on the disillusionment about the state of health care. Recently, popular wearable makers like Oura and Whoop have added lab test offerings, as did telehealth giant Hims & Hers. 

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