Weight loss has always been big business, but it’s exploded of late due to surging demand for Ozempic, Wegovy and other new diabetes and obesity drugs.
In the first half of 2023, sales of Ozempic and Wegovy rose by 58% and 363%, respectively. That’s after quarterly prescriptions for those types of GLP-1 treatments, which mimic a hormone in the gut to suppress a person’s appetite, increased 300% between early 2020 and the end of last year.
But as consumers and businesses pour more money and resources into tackling the obesity epidemic, which costs the U.S. more than $170 billion a year, drug developers aren’t alone in coming up with innovative solutions.
Signos, a five-year-old startup, is taking an approach that doesn’t involve pills.
The company is using off-the-shelf continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, and providing real-time diet and exercise recommendations based on an individual’s readings. CGMs are small sensors worn on the upper arm that track glucose levels, primarily for people with diabetes. The information is wirelessly sent to a smartphone, allowing the user to better prevent emergencies.
Signos uses CGMs built by Dexcom. The startup has its own app that shows users how their body responds to specific foods, what causes their glucose to spike and when they should exercise to get the best results for weight loss.
On Tuesday, Signos said it closed a $20 million funding round led by Cheyenne Ventures and GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. Dexcom Ventures also contributed to the financing. Signos said it will use the fresh capital to continue its research into metabolic health and to expand its team, which is currently around 45 people.
“Whether you have five pounds to lose or 100, we want to make sure we’re able to help everybody,” Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, Signos’ co-founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview.
Customers who sign up for Signos can choose a one-month, three-month or six-month plan. With the half-year plan, users pay $143 a month, which includes all of the pricey CGMs they’ll need during that time. The company declined to share specific details about how many people are currently using its platform.
Fouladgar-Mercer said the long timelines are designed to attract users who are serious about their weight-loss journey. Additionally, the sensors themselves have a long wear time. The Dexcom G6 and G7, the latest devices, can measure glucose for up to 10 days. Signos currently supports the G6 and will soon work with the G7 as well.
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos is using Dexcom’s CGMs as part of a clinical study approved by an institutional review board designated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to monitor biomedical research involving real people.
Fouladgar-Mercer said he created the company in 2018 partly because of his own struggle to manage weight throughout his life. He trained as an athlete and played hockey in college, but he said he noticed how food often affected him differently from the way it affected his teammates.
He said he always felt that, in an effort to understand an individual’s metabolism, there was a “critical component” missing, and it had been nagging at him for 30 years.
Signos helps users understand the right decision to make in the moment, but they can go “behind the scenes” and learn as much about the science as they’d like, Fouladgar-Mercer said. Users can also integrate sleep data, heart rate data, and exercise data from their Apple Watch to personalize their profile even more.
“Once they trust the system works and they understand the methodology, they can just follow the really quick, here’s what I do, here’s what I do, here’s what I do,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “And that’s how you get behavioral change.”
Though Dexcom primarily develops its CGMs for patients with diabetes, the company is also working toward broader applications. For instance, next year it’s releasing a new product meant for people who aren’t taking insulin. Similarly, Abbott Laboratories, which dominates the global CGM market, is hoping to bring its first consumer-facing CGM, called Lingo, to the U.S. next year, adding personalized coaching with recommendations about diet, sleep and exercise.
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos has more data points than “anybody does in the world for non-diabetics.” He added that since the company built its first product almost five years ago, it’s been able to focus on fine-tuning its technology.
“I don’t want to incorrectly set expectations,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “I think a lot of times, it’s like, ‘Oh, lost X pounds in X days.’ That’s not what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s really, how do we put you on a sustainable journey? And that journey is not going to be done in two or three days.”
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos can work well alongside Ozempic and Wegovy from Novo Nordisk and other GLP-1 treatments. Novo Nordisk’s share price has quadrupled since 2018, and the company is now the most valuable in Europe.
Fouladgar-Mercer said GLP-1 drugs are a “powerful tool” that can help people jump-start weight loss, but it can be challenging to keep weight off if they stop taking the medication. Platforms such as Signos can help to reinforce and maintain a healthier lifestyle over time, he said.
Ultimately, he said, he wants people to use Signos to learn how to make better choices that work best for their bodies.
Signos, Fouladgar-Mercer said, can use technology and data “to drive behavioral change, and then wrap that all in a system that really is focused on driving and solving this biggest problem we have in America, which is weight.”
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Tuesday’s key moments. 1. Stocks were mixed on Tuesday, with the S & P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average up and the Nasdaq Composite down slightly, with Big Tech names under pressure. Nvidia shares fell more than 6% after The Information reported that Meta may use Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) in its data centers starting in 2027. Broadcom , which helps Google design its TPUs, jumped 11% Monday on the news. Jim Cramer said the pullback in Nvidia is a buying opportunity. “If you don’t have any Nvidia, it’s time to buy,” he said. He added investors are also “getting an opportunity to buy Meta” on the possibility the company could save money on chips and see its stock bounce. 2. This “discouraging day” for tech investors shows the value of having a diversified portfolio, Jim said. That’s why the Club favors defensive names like Procter & Gamble . With a new CEO taking over in January, Jim expects changes ahead. “You can’t have a new CEO come in and not have some change from what’s going on,” he said, noting that underperforming units will likely be cut. Procter has been a disappointment lately, but our thesis is that money will move out of high-flying tech stocks and into more profitable, economically resistant companies. That’s why we added to our position on Tuesday. Elsewhere, home improvement retailer Home Depot is down nearly 12% year to date. We used that weakness to add to our position last week. When interest rates fall, the stock will rise. 3. Shares of Nike are up 3% after Dick’s Sporting Goods announced plans to close a slew of Foot Locker locations during its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Dick’s acquired Foot Locker in May. “Nike is a buy, off of Dick’s problems,” Jim said. Ed Stack, executive chairman of Dick’s Sporting Goods, told “Squawk on the Street” that the retailer’s relationship with Nike is improving. “They’re moving in the right direction,” he said, citing strong performance from Nike’s running line. “If you take a look at what they did with their running construct, what they did with Pegasus, what they did with Vomero, what they did with Structure, this running concept has done extremely well on the Dick’s side, and where it’s been put into Foot Locker stores, it’s done really well there too.” 4. Stocks covered in Tuesday’s rapid fire at the end of the video were: Best Buy , Agilent Tech , and Abercrombie . (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA, META, AVGO, PG, HD, NKE. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Elon Musk attends the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is expected to close a $15 billion round at a $230 billion pre-money valuation next month, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber.
The deadline for allocation is the end of day on Tuesday, with the round expected to close on Dec. 19, the sources said.
This confirms earlier CNBC reporting that the company was raising $15 billion. The Tesla CEO later called the report on the round “False” in a post on the social media platform X.
At the time, sources told CNBC that xAI would use a large portion of the money for funding graphics processing units responsible for powering large language models.
CNBC had previously reported in September that the startup was looking to raise $10 billion at a $200 billion valuation.
The funding round is yet another sign of the insatiable demand for AI tools. Companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have raised billions and reached sky-high valuations as investors pour more money into companies building foundational AI models.
Musk’s xAI is responsible for creating the Grok chatbot that has come under fire for disseminating hate speech, including antisemitic content. The company recently debuted Grokipedia, an AI-powered competitor to Wikipedia.
In March, Musk announced the merger of xAI with X in a deal valuing the social media platform at $33 billion.
TSMC on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against a former senior vice president it accused of leaking “confidential information” to Intel.
Wei-Jen Lo joined Intel after 21 years at TSMC, having left in July, the Taiwanese chip maker said in a statement, announcing the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is based on Lo’s employment contract and non-compete agreement with TSMC, and regulations such as the Trade Secrets Act, the statement said.
“There is a high probability that Lo uses, leaks, discloses, delivers, or transfers TSMC’s trade secrets and confidential information to Intel,” it said.
TSMC’s share price fell on Tuesday and was last seen over 3% lower.
Intel did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
It follows earlier reports by local media and later by Reuters, which stated Lo may have taken TSMC’s technology data to Intel. Taiwan’s High Prosecutors opened an investigation into the allegations.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg News last week that his “company respects intellectual property rights” and denied any wrongdoing.
The U.S. firm’s stock price moved 1.5% lower in mid-morning trade.
