Digital chronic condition management company Lark Health has closed a Series D funding round worth $100 million.

Deerfield Management Company led the raise, with participation from PFM Health Sciences and returning investors Franklin Templeton, King River Capital, Castlepeak, IPD, Olive Tree Capital and Marvell Technology cofounder Weili Dai.

With the money from its Series D round, Lark’s total amount raised totals $185 million in equity and debt funding to date.

WHAT IT DOES

Lark’s artificial intelligence-enabled platform helps users manage chronic conditions ranging from prediabetes, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stress and anxiety, smoking cessation, and weight management. It uses a conversational AI health coach to give users personalized care in real time.

"Empowering consumers to better manage their health and mitigate the impact of chronic conditions is one of the greatest challenges in healthcare, and approaches to the problem so far have resulted in fragmented care that frustrates consumers, payers, and providers alike,” Dr. Julian Harris, a partner at Deerfield, said in a statement.

“Lark has created a powerful AI-based platform that enables scalable personalized counseling and patient engagement that integrates and coordinates within the ecosystem to drive improved outcomes in a cost-effective way.”

The platform is offered as a benefit for payers and employers, and is currently covered for over 30 million people, according to Lark.

WHAT IT’S FOR

The funds will be put towards growing the platform’s virtual care integrations with payers, Lark said in the announcement. It also plans on investing in research and development to further advance the AI and data science that powers the platform.

"Since the beginning of the pandemic, there is more demand for virtual care than ever before, leaving health plans and providers with an urgent need to deliver seamless virtual care experiences,” Julia Hu, cofounder and CEO of Lark, said in a statement.

“This funding is an incredible validation of Lark's approach of leveraging conversational AI and data science to help payers transform how they deliver care digitally, whether they need to quickly stand up a virtual primary care experience or close care gaps for people living with chronic conditions.”

MARKET SNAPSHOT

With more than half of U.S. adults reporting living with at least one chronic condition, a number of digital health companies offer management services.

Some of the more well-known names in chronic-condition care are Onduo, Welldoc and Omada Health. There’s also Vida Health, Sweetch and Wefight, which have all completed funding rounds of their own in recent months.