Digital health startups raised $7.4 billion during the first half of the year, up from $6.4 billion during the first half of 2025, according to data released this week by Rock Health.
There were 244 deals in the first half of 2026, matching the total of 245 for the first half of last year, but capital is flowing into fewer, larger bets. Megadeals — meaning those worth $100 million or more — accounted for 45% of all funding in the first half of this year. That concentration means roughly 8% of deals absorbed nearly half the money invested in the sector.
The median deal size also rose to $14 million, the highest since 2022 — another sign that investors are writing bigger checks to fewer companies rather than spreading their bets thin.
Mental health retained its title as the most funded clinical category for the seventh year running, but weight management is creeping in. The category ranked second, propelled by the continued GLP-1 boom and platforms like eMed, Nourish and Midi Health expanding into that space.
Of all the mental health and weight loss startups that raised money during the first half of the year, nearly two-third sell directly to consumers, compared to just 29% of digital health companies overall, Rock Health’s report noted. The divide reflects just how much unmet consumer demand is driving investment in these two categories.
Perhaps the more telling shift is qualitative rather than quantitative — the report also noted that AI has become so ubiquitous across the sector that it no longer functions as a meaningful differentiator on its own.
Investors are increasingly asking not who has AI, but who has something AI alone can’t replicate. They’re more focused on founder expertise, platform ownership, hands-on implementation support and strategic partnerships as sources of competitive advantage.
Mary Minno, co-founder of healthcare venture platform Treehub, noted that there’s been a “fundamental shift” in what it takes to build a strong healthcare business.
“Founders previously had to overcome a significant hurdle to build a product — design, engineer, deploy and maintain software. But AI changed that. Now you can design, engineer, deploy and maintain software using words instead. So the moat is no longer technological, but instead it is the learned secrets that those in the industry have about their domain,” she explained.
In her eyes, “there has never been a better time” to build in the digital health space.
The pace of AI adoption across the sector — from all stakeholders, including providers, payers, medical devices and pharma — is garnering more and more investor attention, Minno noted. She said she expects funding to grow even further as the year goes on.
So far, the funding data lines up with that read on the market.
Photo: treety, Getty Images
