As it turns out, exercise is good for you. So is sleep, and unfortunately, so are vegetables.
I’ve heard these health adages hundreds of times before, but they truly began to hit home for me this winter as I tested out a metabolic health platform from the startup Signos. In short, the company offers a subscription service that includes a small continuous glucose monitor (CGM), which you stick on your arm or abdomen, that sends that data to the Signos app which, in turn, aims to help you lose weight by keeping track of your blood sugar.
The subscription price varies depending on the plan you pick. A one-month plan starts at $449, but a 6-month plan starts at about $143 a month if you pay upfront. But services like this, once reserved for diabetics, may soon offer a whole new revenue stream for health companies. Dexcom, for example, recently received FDA clearance for its over-the-counter Stelo product, expected to launch this summer. Meanwhile, Signos competes with other firms like NutriSense, Veri and Levels.
I wanted to get a first-hand understanding of what these glucose monitors are like, so I gave Signos’ latest system, which uses a Dexcom G7 monitor, a try. Here’s what I learned.
Signos
Founded in 2018, Signos uses continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, and an artificial intelligence-powered app to help people better understand their metabolisms. The company gives users personalized insights into how their bodies respond to specific foods and when they should exercise to get the best results for weight loss.
Glucose is a type of sugar we receive from food, and it’s the body’s main source of energy. A CGM is a small sensor that pokes through the skin to track an individual’s blood glucose levels, or blood sugar levels, in real-time. The sensor is usually worn on the upper arm or abdomen, and it can wirelessly transmit data to a smartphone.
CGMs are primarily used by people with diabetes since they can help patients get alerted to emergencies. But Signos’ CGM system is meant for average consumers, so it is not intended for diabetes management. Other companies like Abbott Laboratories are also launching consumer-facing CGM systems in the U.S. this year.
Signos’ platform teaches users how their daily habits like diet, hydration, exercise, stress and sleep affect their glucose and can cause it to spike.
Glucose spikes occur when the amount of sugar present in the bloodstream rapidly increases. This often happens after eating. In the short term, spikes can cause feelings of lethargy and fatigue, but high blood sugar can lead to more serious health problems like diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease over time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Everyone’s glucose levels are variable, so spikes and dips are inevitable, but Signos aims to help people reduce the intensity and frequency of their spikes. The company says that maintaining relatively stable glucose levels can help people improve the health of their metabolism, lose weight and ultimately reduce the risk of chronic disease.
Getting set up
Woman with Signos wearable and app
Source: Signos
To get started with Signos, I had to take a quick questionnaire that asked me for some basic biological information and details about my medical history. I submitted my answers for review by an independent physician, and my CGM prescription was approved and began processing for shipment a few hours later.
After a couple of days, my kit arrived in a brown Signos box. It includes an instruction manual, the CGMs, alcohol wipes and athletic patches to put over the CGM once it’s applied. I followed the instructions in the manual and downloaded the Signos app, which prompted me to set up accounts with Signos and the CGM company Dexcom.
Dexcom makes the CGMs that Signos uses, though Dexcom’s products are exclusively designed for patients diagnosed with diabetes. 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, which monitors biomedical research involving real people, Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, Signos’ co-founder and CEO, told CNBC in October.
Dexcom Ventures also backs Signos as an investor, and the firm participated in the $20 million funding round that Signos announced last fall.
Signos’ platform works with Dexcom’s G6 CGM and the newer G7 CGM. I tested the platform using the G7, which Signos launched in January. The G6 and the G7 sensors last for 10 days, and I went through three G7s during my trial.
Ashley Capoot wearing a CGM.
Ashley Capoot | CNBC
Once I had set up my accounts, it was time to put on my first sensor, which I was nervous about.
I’m generally fine around needles, though I tend to look away if I have to get a shot at the doctor’s office. The CGM’s needle is small – it looks like someone clicked a mechanical pencil a few times, for comparison – but I can’t say I was excited to stick it into my arm.
Much to my relief, applying the sensor is easy and painless.
The Signos app walked me through the process step by step, offering a one-minute video and a series of GIFs I could watch. I cleaned the back of my left arm with an alcohol wipe, placed the applicator there, pressed the button on the applicator and popped the CGM, needle and all, right onto my arm. The G7 is white, about the size of a quarter, and maybe half an inch thick.
I paired the CGM to the Signos app by enabling Bluetooth and scanning the corresponding QR code on my applicator. Once the CGM was applied and paired to my app, I put a purple athletic patch on top to help protect the sensor from tugging, sweat and water.
It took the sensor about 30 minutes to adjust to my body before it was warmed up and ready to go.
What’s good
I was worried that the CGM would be painful or cumbersome, but I forgot about it often, and it’s easy to wear normal clothes and jackets over it, even if they have tight sleeves.
I experienced some sensitivity for a couple days when sleeping on my left side, particularly after changing out the sensor. My upper arm felt a little tender, like there was a light bruise. However, I chose to wear the CGM in the same place on my left arm each time, and I think I could have avoided that sensitivity if I had switched between my left arm and my right arm.
I had never seen or interpreted glucose data before, and I thought the Signos platform did a nice job explaining concepts and breaking them down. The app led me through a series of short articles and activities to get started, like how to log my meals and exercise.
It also introduced me to the concept of my “optimal glucose range,” which is where Signos wants you to try and keep your glucose levels. Signos starts by setting the upper bound of the range at 120 mg/dL, and the lower bound at 80 mg/dL, but the app’s algorithm adjusts it based on your body’s patterns. My upper bound was eventually adjusted to 126 mg/dL, for instance.
When you look at the Signos home page, you can see your real-time glucose reading, your glucose level graph (which includes a shaded area to indicate your optimal range), and the percentage of time you’ve spent in the range each day. This could be particularly beneficial for folks who may be prediabetic and want to keep an eye on their levels over time.
Once I got the hang of the basics, Signos prompted me with more activities and articles that helped me experiment and deepen my understanding of my blood sugar. For instance, one activity encouraged me to try exercising right after a meal, and when I did, I saw it drastically reduced the spike I was experiencing.
Another activity had me try and guess what I thought my glucose levels were at different points throughout the day. I was surprised how quickly I began to understand the correlation between how I was feeling and my current reading. You can skip activities if you don’t want to do them, but on the whole, I found them interesting and useful.
Signos also has registered dieticians on staff, and users can ask them questions via chat, email or through a phone consultation. I set up a meeting after my first week wearing a CGM, and I found it very helpful. I asked a bunch of questions about my data and the Signos app itself, and I also got some tips about what to try and work on next.
The Signos platform.
I knew the experience would be personalized, but I don’t think I’ve ever had this much specific insight into what is happening in my body. I found it fascinating to see how I responded to different foods, and there were some surprises.
I frequently eat instant oatmeal for breakfast, for example, and have always thought of it as a relatively healthy meal. But in actuality, I learned oatmeal causes my glucose to spike significantly. On Feb. 9, oatmeal raised my levels from 88 mg/dL to 167 mg/dL. So while it may be a great breakfast for some people, oatmeal isn’t necessarily the best choice for me.
I was less surprised by my reactions to many other foods, but I still found it valuable to reinforce these concepts with data. Processed foods like chips and sweets caused large spikes in my levels, but fruits, vegetables and protein-rich meals had a much more gradual impact. I eat greek yogurt as a snack a lot, for instance, and I found that it hardly caused my levels to spike.
It felt powerful to see how my body responded to nutritious food and it definitely made me more conscious of the choices I was making.
Ashley Capoot wearing a CGM.
Ashley Capoot | CNBC
As it turns out, spikes in your blood sugar can be caused by a whole lot more than just food. That was news to me. In addition to logging meals and exercise, the Signos app has a “Tags” feature where you can write notes and select from a list of more than 60 different possible spike-causing culprits. Some of the options include stress, travel, medication, sickness, crying and even a hot shower.
I learned that my glucose tends to spike while I’m writing a breaking news story (who knew!), and I spend less time in my optimal range when I’m feeling tired. I had a particularly stressful week at work in January, and looking back at my readings, I can definitely tell.
I found it helpful to visualize how all sorts of different factors, some within my control and some not, could impact my blood sugar. It really drives home the idea that you are affected by the world around you.
And for bonus points, the CGM is a great conversation starter.
I found that my friends, family and colleagues were really interested in the device and what I was learning from it. Since it’s not all that common for the average person to wear CGMs yet, I think there was an element of novelty there.
Finally, it’s easy to take off the CGM when it expires. After the 10 days are up, you simply grab the adhesive and peel it off like a sticker.
What’s bad
Signos’ user interface is easy to use, but some features were more intuitive than others.
It took me a few days to learn how to input my sleep, for instance, because I couldn’t figure out how to log the hours correctly. It was also hard to gauge how much detail to use when logging my meals, as I tended to keep my entries to just a few words. I might have gotten more specific insights and fine-tuned my algorithm further if I had more guidance there.
Additionally, it wasn’t always possible for me to engage with the platform’s alerts and activities, particularly during the work day.
After eating a meal, I would often get a “Fast Rise” notification from my Signos app, which indicates that a glucose spike is occurring. The notification encourages users to engage in 20 to 30 minutes of “brisk walking” or 10 to 15 minutes of plyometrics, a form of high-intensity exercise, to help reduce the spike. I work in-person at CNBC’s newsroom three days a week, so this often wasn’t realistic for me to do.
I asked about this notification when I met with the Signos dietitian, and she told me that any movement is beneficial, even if it’s just a quick walk up or down a flight of stairs. I tried to make sure to take a lap around the newsroom once I learned that, but I think it would have been helpful to know upfront, too.
A “Fast Rise” notification on Signos.
Subscriptions to Signos are expensive, and for many users, CGMs are not covered by insurance yet. Customers who sign up for Signos can choose a one-month, three-month or six-month plan.
The steep price tag is definitely worth considering. According to its website, Signos said users who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes may be able to get the cost of the CGM covered by their insurer. But users who do not have type 2 diabetes may be out of luck.
The company said some people may be able to use their Health Savings Account reimbursement funds to cover the Signos, but that it “is not responsible for reimbursement in any capacity,” according to the site.
In other words, users who want to try and reduce the costs of the platform have to try and figure it out themselves.
I also found myself checking the Signos app frequently, almost like it became another form of social media. This gave me some pause.
I have been fortunate to have had a relatively positive relationship with food throughout my life, and I’m also not someone who experiences much health anxiety. Even so, I tried to be very conscious of my mindset and attitude toward the Signos platform. I treated Signos like a tool and a learning experience, and I really didn’t want to put too much emphasis on the numbers.
I knew that approach would be best for me, and it worked well for the most part. However, I did catch myself feeling guilty about large spikes on a few occasions.
As I noticed those feelings, and how often I was checking the app, I felt like it was pretty easy to see how the platform could end up being harmful for some users’ mental health, particularly if they’ve struggled with body image or eating disorders.
Signos said all prospective members are asked about their medical history, including disordered eating, in their initial medical questionnaire. If someone is actively experiencing or in recovery from an eating disorder, Signos said the independent physician would not approve them for participation in the Signos program.
The company said it does not recommend any specific eating style, and there are metabolic health coaches on staff to help check in with users about how they feel.
As with most things, I think trusting yourself is key here. If you don’t think accessing your metabolic data would be good for your mental health, then using a CGM is probably not a great idea. You can also always check in with your doctor to decide if the technology is right for you.
Takeaways
The Signos experience really depends on you, the user.
The app isn’t going to do the learning or make lifestyle changes for you, so if you aren’t willing to take the time to log your meals and complete activities, chances are you won’t get much out of the platform.
As a young and relatively healthy individual, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Signos, but I learned a lot about how my body responds to my diet, sleep, exercise and stress. The CGM is like a little window into what goes on beneath the skin, and I think it’s easy to see why it’s a valuable tool. After just one month of use, I have a deeper understanding of why I feel sleepy, lethargic or energized.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I return to CGM systems at different stages of my life to better understand how I am responding to my nutrition and the world around me.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
Marco Bello | Getty Images
The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.
The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”
A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.
“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.
Read more CNBC tech news
The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.
It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.
Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.
Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.
President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.
In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”
Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (L) returns to the stage after a pre-recorded interview during the Microsoft Build conference opening keynote in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Microsoft on Friday revised its practices to ensure that engineers in China no longer provide technical support to U.S. defense clients using the company’s cloud services.
The company implemented the changes in an effort to reduce national security and cybersecurity risks stemming from its cloud work with a major customer. The announcement came days after ProPublica published an extensive report describing the Defense Department’s dependence on Microsoft software engineers in China.
“In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services,” Frank Shaw, the Microsoft’s chief communications officer, wrote in a Friday X post.
The change impacts the work of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services division, which analysts estimate now generates more than 25% of the company’s revenue. That makes Azure bigger than Google Cloud but smaller than Amazon Web Services. Microsoft receives “substantial revenue from government contracts,” according to its most recent quarterly earnings statement, and more than half of the company’s $70 billion in first-quarter revenue came from customers based in the U.S.
In 2019, Microsoft won a $10 billion cloud-related defense contract, but the Pentagon wound up canceling it in 2021 after a legal battle. In 2022, the department gave cloud contracts worth up to $9 billion in total to Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft.
ProPublica reported that the work of Microsoft’s Chinese Azure engineers is overseen by “digital escorts” in the U.S., who typically have less technical prowess than the employees they manage overseas. The report detailed how the “digital escort” arrangement might leave the U.S. vulnerable to a cyberattack from China.
“This is obviously unacceptable, especially in today’s digital threat environment,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video posted to X on Friday. He described the architecture as “a legacy system created over a decade ago, during the Obama administration.” The Defense Department will review its systems in search for similar activity, Hegseth said.
Microsoft originally told ProPublica that its employees and contractors were adhering to U.S. government rules.
“We remain committed to providing the most secure services possible to the US government, including working with our national security partners to evaluate and adjust our security protocols as needed,” Shaw wrote.
On June 6, online real estate service Opendoor was so desperate to get its beaten-down stock price back over $1 and stay listed on the Nasdaq that management proposed a reverse split, potentially lifting the price of each share by as much as 50 times.
The stock inched its way up over the next five weeks.
Then Eric Jackson started cheerleading.
Jackson, a hedge fund manager who was bullish on Opendoor years earlier when the company appeared to be thriving and was worth roughly $20 billion, wrote on X on Monday that his firm, EMJ Capital, was back in the stock.
“@EMJCapital has taken a position in $OPEN — and we believe it could be a 100-bagger over the next few years,” Jackson wrote. He added later in the thread that the stock could get to $82.
It’s a long, long way from that mark.
Opendoor shares soared 189% this week, by far their best weekly performance since the company’s public market debut in late 2020. The stock closed on Friday at $2.25. The stock’s highest-volume trading days on record were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.
Jackson said in an interview on Thursday that the bulk of his firm’s Opendoor purchases came when the stock was in the 70s and 80s, meaning cents, and he’s bought options as well for his portfolio.
Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson’s purchases. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.
What has changed dramatically is Jackson’s online influence and the size of his following. The more he posts, the higher the stock goes.
“There’s a real hunger for buying the next big thing,” Jackson told CNBC, adding that investors like to find the “downtrodden.”
It’s something Jackson’s firm, based in Toronto, has in common with Opendoor.
When Opendoor went public through a special purpose acquisition company in 2020, it was riding a SPAC wave and broader gains driven by low interest rates and Covid-era market euphoria. Investors pumped money into the riskiest assets, lifting money-losing tech upstarts to astronomical valuations.
Opendoor’s business involved using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains. Zillow tried and failed to compete.
Opendoor shares peaked at over $39 in Feb. 2021 for a market cap just above $22.5 billion. But by the end of that year, the shares were trading below $15, before collapsing 92% in 2022 to end the year at $1.16.
Rising interest rates hammered the whole tech sector, hitting Opendoor particularly hard as increased borrowing costs reduced demand for homes.
Jackson, similarly, had a miserable 2022, coinciding with the worst year for the Nasdaq since 2008. Jackson said his key client withdrew its money at the end of the year, and “I’ve been small ever since.”
‘Epic comeback’
While his assets under management remain minimal, Jackson’s reputation for getting in early to a rebound story was burnished by the performance of Carvana.
The automotive e-commerce platform lost 98% of its value in 2022 as investors weighed the likelihood of bankruptcy. In the middle of that year, with Carvana still far from bottoming out, Jackson expressed his bullishness. He told CNBC that April that he liked the stock, and then promoted its recovery on a podcast in June. He also said he liked Opendoor at the time.
Investors willing to stomach further losses in 2022 were rewarded with a 1,000% gain in 2023, and a lot more upside from there. The stock closed on Friday at $347.52, up from a low of $3.72 in Dec. 2022, and almost triple its price at the time of Jackson’s appearance on CNBC in April of that year.
After Carvana’s 2022 slide, “then obviously began an epic comeback,” Jackson said. Opendoor, meanwhile, “continued to roll down the mountain,” he said.
Jackson said that the fallout of 2022 led him to pursue a different method of stockpicking. He started hiring a small team of developers, which is now four people, to build out artificial intelligence models. The firm has experimented with several models —some have worked and some haven’t — but he said the focus now is using what he’s learned from Carvana to find “100x” opportunities.
In addition to Opendoor, Jackson has been promoting IREN, a provider of power for bitcoin mining and AI workloads, and Cipher Mining, which is in a similar space. He’s seen his following on Elon Musk‘s social media site X, which he said was stuck for years between 32,000 and 34,000, swell to almost 50,000. And after a lengthy lull, investors are reaching out to him to try and put money into his fund, he said.
Jackson has a lot riding on Opendoor, a company that saw revenue and number of homes sold slip in the first quarter from a year earlier, and racked up almost $370 million in losses over the past four quarters.
In early June, Opendoor announced plans for a reverse split — ranging from 1 for 10 to 1 for 50 — to “give us optionality in preserving our listing on Nasdaq.” With the stock now well over $1, such a move appears less necessary, as shareholders prepare to vote on the proposal on July 28.
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jackson. “Those things usually further cement a company’s move into oblivion rather than hail some big revival.”
Opendoor didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Banking on growth
Analysts are projecting a more than 5% drop in revenue this year, followed by 20% growth in 2026 and 12% expansion in 2017, according to LSEG. Losses are expected to narrow over that stretch.
Jackson said his analysis factors in projections of $11.5 billion in revenue for 2029, which would be well over double the company’s expected sales for this year. He looked at the multiples of companies like Zillow and Carvana, which he said trade for 4 to 7 times forward revenue. Opendoor’s forward price-to-sales ratio is currently well below 1.
With Zillow and Redfin having exited the instant-buying home market, Opendoor faces little competition in allowing homeowners to sell their property online for cash, rather than going through an extended bidding, sales and closing process.
Jackson is banking on revenue growth and increased market share to lead to a profitable business that will push investors to value the company with a multiple somewhere between Zillow and Carvana. At $82, Opendoor would be worth about $60 billion, which is roughly 5 times projected 2029 revenue.
Jackson said his model assumes that “like Carvana, Opendoor can prove that it can permanently turn the tide and get to sustained profitability” so that the “market multiple would get reassessed.”
In the meantime, he’ll keep posting on X.
On Friday, Jackson wrote a thread consisting of 11 posts, recounting the challenge of having “99.5% of my AUM” disappear overnight after his primary investor pulled out in 2022.
“Translation: he fired me for losing him too much money,” Jackson wrote. He said he almost shut down the fund, and was even encouraged to do so by his wife and accountant.
Now, Jackson is using his recent momentum on social media to try and attract investor money, while still reminding prospects that he could lose it.
“All I have is my reputation,” he wrote, “and, unless I keep picking good stocks, it will be gone.”