Evvy Raises $40M Series B to Advance Women's Health Research With Vaginal Microbiome Data

Women's health company Evvy has raised $40 million in Series B funding to expand its vaginal microbiome platform and accelerate research into fertility and other areas of women's health.

The round was led by Catalio Capital Management. Founded in 2021 by Priyanka Jain, Laine Bruzek and Pita Navarro, Evvy is combining at-home microbiome testing, clinical care and biological data to build a deeper understanding of women's health.

The company's approach is centered on vaginal microbiome data. Evvy says it operates the only at-home CLIA-certified and CLEP-certified metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) test for analyzing vaginal microbes using a single swab.

Building a Large-Scale Women's Health Dataset

Evvy's testing process allows patients to collect samples at home and mail them to the company's laboratory. Its mNGS sequencing technology analyzes the sample before results are reviewed by clinicians registered on the platform.

Patients can then access their results through an online health portal alongside clinical interpretation and potential next steps, including personalized prescription care when appropriate.

Since launching, Evvy says it has served more than 100,000 patients across the United States and works with approximately 3,000 practitioners.

The company also says its research has resulted in 15 peer-reviewed publications and abstracts, the identification of novel bacterial vaginosis subtypes and the discovery of hundreds of previously uncatalogued vaginal microbiome genomes.

Turning Microbiome Data Into Research

Patient care is only one part of Evvy's long-term strategy.

The company wants to build a dataset connecting microbiome biology with symptoms, interventions and health outcomes. The objective is to identify relationships that could eventually support new biomarkers and improve how certain women's health conditions are understood and treated.

Evvy believes larger and more representative biological datasets could help researchers investigate questions that have historically been difficult to answer using conventional health data.

The company is particularly interested in connecting microbiome signals with areas including infertility, gynecological cancer, preterm birth, IVF outcomes and recurrent pregnancy loss.

Last year, Evvy launched a prospective study using its vaginal microbiome tests in IVF clinics to investigate potential connections between microbiome profiles and fertility outcomes.

Introducing EvvyAI

Evvy is also incorporating artificial intelligence into its platform.

In May, the company launched EvvyAI, an AI assistant designed to translate microbiome data into real-time guidance for users.

The system is intended to help users understand their results and provide guidance while directing questions requiring medical expertise to clinicians on the platform.

The combination of biological data and AI is central to Evvy's broader vision. Rather than relying only on AI models trained on existing medical literature and datasets, the company is building a proprietary source of biological information that could potentially be used to identify patterns across symptoms, treatments, fertility outcomes and other biomarkers.

Expanding Into Fertility

Evvy is now moving beyond vaginal health into fertility, representing its first major expansion into another area of women's health.

The company is continuing to collect data and conduct research around the relationship between vaginal microbiomes and infertility, IVF success rates and recurrent pregnancy loss.

Its broader research ambitions could eventually extend to conditions including endometriosis, premenopause, HPV progression and other areas of women's health.

Evvy's longer-term vision is to develop what CEO and co-founder Priyanka Jain describes as a new-generation Pap smear - an at-home, non-invasive test capable of providing women with more frequent and data-rich health insights.

$40M to Scale Research and Women's Health Infrastructure

The $40 million Series B gives Evvy additional capital to expand its platform, grow its research capabilities and investigate new applications of vaginal microbiome data.

The company is operating in an expanding vaginal health ecosystem that includes startups such as Juno Bio, Tiny Health and Daye.

With more than 100,000 patients already served and thousands of practitioners using its platform, Evvy is building a combination of diagnostic testing, clinical care, AI and biological research data.

Its latest funding marks another step toward its goal of using large-scale microbiome datasets to improve understanding of women's health and potentially identify new biomarkers and approaches to care.