Breast pump startup Willow acquires belongings of Elvie as UK ladies’s well being pioneer strikes into administration

Girls’s well being and its startups constructing related breast pumps, interval trackers, and different apps and {hardware} designed for girls have collectively pulled in additional than $5 billion in funding within the final 5 years, however the market is tight, and now, two of the trailblazers within the house are coming collectively as consolidation beckons. 

Willow, the San Francisco startup that made its identify with wearable breast pumps, is buying Elvie, which began with a wise Kegel coach earlier than increasing to different merchandise for brand new moms, together with its personal breast pumps and most lately, a bassinet.

Phrases of the deal haven’t been disclosed however we perceive that it’s coming as Elvie enters administration. The London startup raised greater than $186 million over the past 12 years with traders, together with Octopus Ventures, BlackRock, and Blume Fairness, amongst others. Its final valuation was $241 million, per information from PitchBook. 

The businesses have been in dialog for a while, after Willow approached Elvie to purchase it. However as talks progressed, Elvie additionally approached the top of its runway.

“The transaction is taking form after many months of other expectations,” Willow CEO Sarah O’Leary mentioned in an interview.

We perceive Willow is taking over the prevailing enterprise, together with its merchandise and crew. There are at the moment 170 folks working throughout London and Bristol, though a few of these are already figuring out their discover durations and gained’t be approaching to Willow. 

For its half, Willow has raised round $254 million in a mix of fairness and debt with traders, together with the likes of NEA and Meritech. Its valuation, per PitchBook, had risen to as a lot as $256 million in 2021 (a excessive watermark for enterprise funding normally) however had dropped in 2024 when the corporate raised a mix of fairness and debt. 

O’Leary, who stepped into the CEO function on the finish of 2023, declined to touch upon its present valuation however mentioned that the corporate could also be trying to increase extra later this yr. 

Elvie’s tip out of business speaks to a few of the wider challenges on the planet of girls’s well being, which is estimated to be a $60 billion market this yr however has confronted plenty of headwinds. The market since 2021 has continued to be difficult for later-stage startups, particularly these that aren’t targeted virtually solely on AI. There should not lots of exit alternatives for girls’s well being companies in the mean time. Plus, as O’Leary factors out, the market (eyeing that $60 billion determine, little question) has been flooded with a plethora of cheaper merchandise.  

Cheaper is one drawback, however so is the truth that there are only a lot of comparable merchandise available in the market. Elvie has sued at the least one firm for patent infringement prior to now (unsuccessfully), and curiously it was additionally the topic of a patent go well with itself — filed by Willow. An acquisition places that combat to relaxation.

The latest drama with 23andMe additionally highlights a few of the massive points with managing person information, particularly well being information, when issues go awry with the enterprise. And that’s maybe much more the case with ladies’s well being and reproductive companies within the present political local weather.

And, as ever, {hardware} — or at the least the flexibility to show {hardware} startups into worthwhile companies — stays arduous.

Willow’s hope is that its acquisition of Elvie marks the beginning of some wider consolidation and Willow’s personal efforts to construct out a wider platform: If exit alternatives are few and much between, then make your individual platform and change into the consolidator. 

Girls’s well being as a class actually arose through the years because it grew to become, due to the cloud, smartphones and improvements in massive information analytics, easier-to-build apps to have interaction with the market, and {hardware} prototypes launched by way of crowdfunding platforms to gauge client curiosity. These merchandise additionally got here out of a extra empowered demographic demanding tech to assembly their very own wants. Now Willow’s problem — and alternative — can be to see if it will possibly convert that into revenue over time.

“We need to present that femtech merchandise should not solely nice tales, however nice companies,” she mentioned.