Hinge Health, a provider of digital physical therapy services, filed to go public on Monday, the latest sign that the IPO market is starting to crack open.
Hinge Health uses software to help patients treat musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain and carry out post-surgery rehabilitation remotely. The company’s revenue last year increased 33% to $390 million, according to its prospectus, and its net loss for the year narrowed to $11.9 million from $108.1 million a year earlier.
The IPO market has been quiet across the tech sector for the past three years, but within digital health it’s been almost completely silent, as companies have struggled to adapt to an environment of muted growth following the Covid-19 pandemic. No digital health companies held IPOs in 2023, according to a report from Rock Health, and last year the only notable offerings were Waystar, a health-care payment software vendor, and Tempus AI, a precision medicine company.
“We have many decades of work ahead,” Hinge Health CEO Daniel Perez said in the filing Monday. “We hope you join us on this journey.”
The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HNGE.”
Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg, Hinge Health’s chairman, co-founded the company in 2014 after experiencing personal struggles with physical rehabilitation, according to the company’s website.
Members of Hinge Health can access virtual exercise therapy and an electrical nerve stimulation device called Enso. The company claims its technology can help users improve their pain, reduce the need for surgery and cut down health-care costs.
The San Francisco-based company has raised more than $1 billion from investors including Tiger Global and Coatue Management, and it boasted a $6.2 billion valuation as of October 2021. The biggest outside shareholders are venture firms Insight Partners and Atomico, which own 19% and 15% of the stock, respectively, according to the filing.
Hinge Health’s dual class stock structure gives each share of Class B common stock 15 votes. Almost all of the Class B shares are owned by the founders and top investors.
Employees across more than 2,250 organizations, including Morgan Stanley, Target and General Motors, can access Hinge Health’s offerings. The company had more than 532,000 members as of Dec. 31, and more than 20 million people are eligible to enroll, the filing said.
An Amazon worker moves boxes on Amazon Prime Day in the East Village of New York City, July 11, 2023.
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Amazon is extending its Prime Day discount bonanza, announcing that the annual sale will run four days this year.
The 96-hour event will start at 12:01 a.m. PT on July 8, and continue through July 11, Amazon said in a release.
For the first time, the company will roll out themed “deal drops” that change daily and are available “while supplies last.” Amazon has in recent years toyed with adding more limited-run and invite-only deals during Prime Day events to create a feeling of urgency or scarcity.
Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 as a way to secure new members for its $139-a-year loyalty program, and to promote its own products and services while providing a sales boost in the middle of the year. In 2019, the company made Prime Day a 48-hour event, and it’s since added a second Prime Day-like event in the fall.
Prime Day is also a significant revenue driver for other retailers, which often host competing discount events.
Illustration of the SK Hynix company logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen.
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Shares in South Korea’s SK Hynix extended gains to hit a more than 2-decade high on Tuesday, following reports over the weekend that SK Group plans to build the country’s largest AI data center.
SK Hynix shares, which have surged almost 50% so far this year on the back of an AI boom, were up nearly 3%, following gains on Monday.
The company’s parent, SK Group, plans to build the AI data center in partnership with Amazon Web Services in Ulsan, according to domestic media. SK Telecom and SK Broadband are reportedly leading the initiative, with support from other affiliates, including SK Hynix.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory or DRAM — a type of semiconductor memory found in PCs, workstations and servers that is used to store data and program code.
The company’s DRAM rival, Samsung, was also trading up 4% on Tuesday. However, it’s growth has fallen behind that of SK Hynix.
On Friday, Samsung Electronics’ market cap reportedly slid to a 9-year low of 345.1 trillion won ($252 billion) as the chipmaker struggles to capitalize on AI-led demand.
SK Hynix, on the other hand, has become a leader in high bandwidth memory — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers — supplying to clients such as AI behemoth Nvidia.
A report from Counterpoint Research in April said that SK Hynix had captured 70% of the HBM market by revenue share in the first quarter.
This HBM strength helped it overtake Samsung in the overall DRAM market for the first time ever, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%.
OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. Defense Department with artificial intelligence tools.
The department announced the one-year contract on Monday, months after OpenAI said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said. It’s the first contract with OpenAI listed on the Department of Defense’s website.
Anduril received a $100 million defense contract in December. Weeks earlier, OpenAI rival Anthropic said it would work with Palantir and Amazon to supply its AI models to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, said in a discussion with OpenAI board member and former National Security Agency leader Paul Nakasone at a Vanderbilt University event in April that “we have to and are proud to and really want to engage in national security areas.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Defense Department specified that the contract is with OpenAI Public Sector LLC, and that the work will mostly occur in the National Capital Region, which encompasses Washington, D.C., and several nearby counties in Maryland and Virginia.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is working to build additional computing power in the U.S. In January, Altman appeared alongside President Donald Trump at the White House to announce the $500 billion Stargate project to build AI infrastructure in the U.S.
The new contract will represent a small portion of revenue at OpenAI, which is generating over $10 billion in annualized sales. In March, the company announced a $40 billion financing round at a $300 billion valuation.
In April, Microsoft, which supplies cloud infrastructure to OpenAI, said the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency has authorized the use of the Azure OpenAI service with secret classified information.