Startups

Future Family takes in new capital as need for fertility treatments increases

Comment

Future Family, Claire Tomkins
Image Credits: Drew Bird (opens in a new window) / Future Family CEO Claire Tomkins with her children

Less than a year after taking a small Series A extension, Future Family, a startup aiming to make fertility services, like IVF and egg freezing, more accessible, is back with $25 million in Series B funding.

Munich Re Ventures led the round and was joined by TriVentures, MS&AD Ventures and ORIX and existing investors Aspect Ventures, Mindset Ventures, at.inc/ and OurCrowd. The latest round gives the company $150 million in total funding, which includes $100 million in a credit facility announced in 2018.

We’ve covered Future Family now for nearly five years — you can read all about it here — and followed founder Claire Tomkins as she and her team set out to partner with clinics so that all of the pricing for procedures is worked out ahead of time and bills are paid upfront so there are no hidden or surprise costs.

The company offers 60-month loan plans that range between $300 and $475 per month and cover things like clinic procedures, lab work and medications.

In 2021, Tomkins told TechCrunch she expected a record amount of activity due to people waiting through the global pandemic to move forward with treatments. And that’s exactly what happened; the result was Future Family saw its gross transaction volume — the volume of patients it was financing — jump 300% in 2021. The company also doubled its headcount.

She expects an even faster pace of growth for this year and in 2023 as many people have now navigated the pandemic. She noted CDC statistics that show some 20% of Americans will need access to fertility care in coming years, and as people wait later in life to begin their families, 1 in 8 will experience age-related infertility. Most people finance a car, so for Tomkins, it is natural that with the average cost of an IVF cycle being $12,400 — similar to the cost of a car — people would want to finance fertility treatments.

The new funding will enable the Future Family to expand its network, invest in staffing and product development and explore new channels. Tomkins hinted that there would be more news in the second half of the year.

“We’d seen such a strong performance with the company growth and momentum, so we were interested in raising in the second half of last year,” Claire Tomkins, Future Family founder and CEO told TechCrunch. “It’s never been harder to start a family than in 2022 just between the age-related infertility and the cost of getting care is so high. Future Family offers a unique solution, a buy now, pay later for healthcare, that makes sense and has easy monthly plans.”

Demand for fertility services persists despite COVID-19 shutdowns

More TechCrunch

Less than one year after its iOS launch, French startup ten ten has gone viral with a walkie talkie app that allows teens to send voice messages to their close…

French startup ten ten finds viral success and controversy in reinventing walkie-talkies

Featured Article

Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

While all of Wesley Chan’s success has been well-documented over the years, his personal journey…not so much. Chan spoke to TechCrunch about the ways his life impacts how he invests in startups.

9 hours ago
Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now has an account on the short-form video app that he once tried to ban. Trump’s TikTok account, which launched on Saturday night, features…

Trump takes off on TikTok

With fewer than 400,000 inhabitants, Iceland receives more than its fair share of tourists — and of venture capital.

Iceland’s startup scene is all about making the most of the country’s resources

Kobo put out a handful of new e-readers a few weeks back: color versions of the excellent Libra 2 and Clara, as well as an updated monochrome version of the…

Kobo’s new e-readers are a sidegrade most can skip (with one exception)

In an interview at his home near Reykjavík, the entrepreneur-turned-VC shared thoughts on his ventures and the journey that led him from Unity to climate tech, a homecoming of sorts.

Unity co-founder David Helgason’s next act: Gaming the climate crisis

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Over the past eight years,…

Fisker collapsed under the weight of its founder’s promises

What is AI? We’ve put together this non-technical guide to give anyone a fighting chance to understand how and why today’s AI works.

WTF is AI?

President Joe Biden has vetoed H.J.Res. 109, a congressional resolution that would have overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current approach to banks and crypto. Specifically, the resolution targeted the…

President Biden vetoes crypto custody bill

Featured Article

Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?

How large a role humanoids will play in that ecosystem is, perhaps, the biggest question on everyone’s mind at the moment.

1 day ago
Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?

VCs are clamoring to invest in hot AI companies, and willing to pay exorbitant share prices for coveted spots on their cap tables. Even so, most aren’t able to get…

VCs are selling shares of hot AI companies like Anthropic and xAI to small investors in a wild SPV market

The fashion industry has a huge problem: Despite many returned items being unworn or undamaged, a lot, if not the majority, end up in the trash. An estimated 9.5 billion…

Deal Dive: How (Re)vive grew 10x last year by helping retailers recycle and sell returned items

Tumblr officially shut down “Tips,” an opt-in feature where creators could receive one-time payments from their followers.  As of today, the tipping icon has automatically disappeared from all posts and…

You can no longer use Tumblr’s tipping feature 

Generative AI improvements are increasingly being made through data curation and collection — not architectural — improvements. Big Tech has an advantage.

AI training data has a price tag that only Big Tech can afford

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: Can we (and could we ever) trust OpenAI?

Jasper Health, a cancer care platform startup, laid off a substantial part of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

General Catalyst-backed Jasper Health lays off staff

Featured Article

Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Live Nation says its Ticketmaster subsidiary was hacked. A hacker claims to be selling 560 million customer records.

2 days ago
Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Featured Article

Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

An autonomous pod. A solid-state battery-powered sports car. An electric pickup truck. A convertible grand tourer EV with up to 600 miles of range. A “fully connected mobility device” for young urban innovators to be built by Foxconn and priced under $30,000. The next Popemobile. Over the past eight years, famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker…

2 days ago
Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

Late Friday afternoon, a time window companies usually reserve for unflattering disclosures, AI startup Hugging Face said that its security team earlier this week detected “unauthorized access” to Spaces, Hugging…

Hugging Face says it detected ‘unauthorized access’ to its AI model hosting platform

Featured Article

Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps

Using stalkerware is creepy, unethical, potentially illegal, and puts your data and that of your loved ones in danger.

2 days ago
Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps

The design brief was simple: each grind and dry cycle had to be completed before breakfast. Here’s how Mill made it happen.

Mill’s redesigned food waste bin really is faster and quieter than before

Google is embarrassed about its AI Overviews, too. After a deluge of dunks and memes over the past week, which cracked on the poor quality and outright misinformation that arose…

Google admits its AI Overviews need work, but we’re all helping it beta test

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. In…

Startups Weekly: Musk raises $6B for AI and the fintech dominoes are falling

The product, which ZeroMark calls a “fire control system,” has two components: a small computer that has sensors, like lidar and electro-optical, and a motorized buttstock.

a16z-backed ZeroMark wants to give soldiers guns that don’t miss against drones

The RAW Dating App aims to shake up the dating scheme by shedding the fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience. The app…

Pitch Deck Teardown: RAW Dating App’s $3M angel deck

Yes, we’re calling it “ThreadsDeck” now. At least that’s the tag many are using to describe the new user interface for Instagram’s X competitor, Threads, which resembles the column-based format…

‘ThreadsDeck’ arrived just in time for the Trump verdict

Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin confirmed on Friday that it had been the victim of a hack resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin, or about $305 million.  According to…

Hackers steal $305M from DMM Bitcoin crypto exchange

This is not a drill! Today marks the final day to secure your early-bird tickets for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 at a significantly reduced rate. At midnight tonight, May 31, ticket…

Disrupt 2024 early-bird prices end at midnight

Instagram is testing a way for creators to experiment with reels without committing to having them displayed on their profiles, giving the social network a possible edge over TikTok and…

Instagram tests ‘trial reels’ that don’t display to a creator’s followers

U.S. federal regulators have requested more information from Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, as part of an investigation into rear-end crash risks posed by unexpected braking. The National Highway Traffic Safety…

Feds tell Zoox to send more info about autonomous vehicles suddenly braking