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.”
An employee walks past a quilt displaying Etsy Inc. signage at the company’s headquarters in the Brooklyn.
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Etsy is trying to make it easier for shoppers to purchase products from local merchants and avoid the extra cost of imports as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs raise concerns about soaring prices.
In a post to Etsy’s website on Thursday, CEO Josh Silverman said the company is “surfacing new ways for buyers to discover businesses in their countries” via shopping pages and by featuring local sellers on its website and app.
“While we continue to nurture and enable cross-border trade on Etsy, we understand that people are increasingly interested in shopping domestically,” Silverman said.
Etsy operates an online marketplace that connects buyers and sellers with mostly artisanal and handcrafted goods. The site, which had 5.6 million active sellers as of the end of December, competes with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon, as well as newer entrants that have ties to China like Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop.
By highlighting local sellers, Etsy could relieve some shoppers from having to pay higher prices induced by President Trump’s widespread tariffs on trade partners. Trump has imposed tariffs on most foreign countries, with China facing a rate of 145%, and other nations facing 10% rates after he instituted a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations. Trump also signed an executive order that will end the de minimis provision, a loophole for low-value shipments often used by online businesses, on May 2.
Temu and Shein have already announced they plan to raise prices late next week in response to the tariffs. Sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, many of whom source their products from China, have said they’re considering raising prices.
Silverman said Etsy has provided guidance for its sellers to help them “run their businesses with as little disruption as possible” in the wake of tariffs and changes to the de minimis exemption.
Before Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect, Silverman said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in late February that he expects Etsy to benefit from the tariffs and de minimis restrictions because it “has much less dependence on products coming in from China.”
“We’re doing whatever work we can do to anticipate and prepare for come what may,” Silverman said at the time. “In general, though, I think Etsy will be more resilient than many of our competitors in these situations.”
Still, American shoppers may face higher prices on Etsy as U.S. businesses that source their products or components from China pass some of those costs on to consumers.
Etsy shares are down 17% this year, slightly more than the Nasdaq.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Google’s antitrust woes are continuing to mount, just as the company tries to brace for a future dominated by artificial intelligence.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers.
The ruling, which followed a September trial in Alexandria, Virginia, represents a second major antitrust blow for Google in under a year. In August, a judge determined the company has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search, the most-significant antitrust ruling in the tech industry since the case against Microsoftmore than 20 years ago.
Google is in a particularly precarious spot as it tries to simultaneously defend its primary business in court while fending off an onslaught of new competition due to the emergence of generative AI, most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which offers users alternative ways to search for information. Revenue growth has cooled in recent years, and Google also now faces the added potential of a slowdown in ad spending due to economic concerns from President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs.
Parent company Alphabet reports first-quarter results next week. Alphabet’s stock price dipped more than 1% on Thursday and is now down 20% this year.
In Thursday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said Google’s anticompetitive practices “substantially harmed” publishers and users on the web. The trial featured 39 live witnesses, depositions from an additional 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits.
Judge Brinkema ruled that Google unlawfully controls two of the three parts of the advertising technology market: the publisher ad server market and ad exchange market. Brinkema dismissed the third part of the case, determining that tools used for general display advertising can’t clearly be defined as Google’s own market. In particular, the judge cited the purchases of DoubleClick and Admeld and said the government failed to show those “acquisitions were anticompetitive.”
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president or regulatory affairs, said in an emailed statement. “We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release from the DOJ that the ruling represents a “landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
Potential ad disruption
If regulators force the company to divest parts of the ad-tech business, as the Justice Department has requested, it could open up opportunities for smaller players and other competitors to fill the void and snap up valuable market share. Amazon has been growing its ad business in recent years.
Meanwhile, Google is still defending itself against claims that its search has acted as a monopoly by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance. Google said in August, immediately after the search case ruling, that it would appeal, meaning the matter can play out in court for years even after the remedies are determined.
The remedies trial, which will lay out the consequences, begins next week. The Justice Department is aiming for a break up of Google’s Chrome browser and eliminating exclusive agreements, like its deal with Apple for search on iPhones. The judge is expected to make the ruling by August.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai (L) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) listen as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a roundtable with American and Indian business leaders in the East Room of the White House on June 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
After the ad market ruling on Thursday, Gartner’s Andrew Frank said Google’s “conflicts of interest” are apparent by how the market runs.
“The structure has been decades in the making,” Frank said, adding that “untangling that would be a significant challenge, particularly since lawyers don’t tend to be system architects.”
However, the uncertainty that comes with a potentially years-long appeals process means many publishers and advertisers will be waiting to see how things shake out before making any big decisions given how much they rely on Google’s technology.
“Google will have incentives to encourage more competition possibly by loosening certain restrictions on certain media it controls, YouTube being one of them,” Frank said. “Those kind of incentives may create opportunities for other publishers or ad tech players.”
A date for the remedies trial hasn’t been set.
Damian Rollison, senior director of market insights for marketing platform Soci, said the revenue hit from the ad market case could be more dramatic than the impact from the search case.
“The company stands to lose a lot more in material terms if its ad business, long its main source of revenue, is broken up,” Rollison said in an email. “Whereas divisions like Chrome are more strategically important.”
Jason Citron, CEO of Discord in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
The New Jersey attorney general sued Discord on Thursday, alleging that the company misled consumers about child safety features on the gaming-centric social messaging app.
The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court by Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state’s division of consumer affairs, alleges that Discord violated the state’s consumer fraud laws.
Discord did so, the complaint said, by allegedly “misleading children and parents from New Jersey” about safety features, “obscuring” the risks children face on the platform and failing to enforce its minimum age requirement.
“Discord’s strategy of employing difficult to navigate and ambiguous safety settings to lull parents and children into a false sense of safety, when Discord knew well that children on the Application were being targeted and exploited, are unconscionable and/or abusive commercial acts or practices,” lawyers wrote in the legal filing.
They alleged that Discord’s acts and practices were “offensive to public policy.”
A Discord spokesperson said in a statement that the company disputes the allegations and that it is “proud of our continuous efforts and investments in features and tools that help make Discord safer.”
“Given our engagement with the Attorney General’s office, we are surprised by the announcement that New Jersey has filed an action against Discord today,” the spokesperson said.
One of the lawsuit’s allegations centers around Discord’s age-verification process, which the plaintiffs believe is flawed, writing that children under thirteen can easily lie about their age to bypass the app’s minimum age requirement.
The lawsuit also alleges that Discord misled parents to believe that its so-called Safe Direct Messaging feature “was designed to automatically scan and delete all private messages containing explicit media content.” The lawyers claim that Discord misrepresented the efficacy of that safety tool.
“By default, direct messages between ‘friends’ were not scanned at all,” the complaint stated. “But even when Safe Direct Messaging filters were enabled, children were still exposed to child sexual abuse material, videos depicting violence or terror, and other harmful content.”
The New Jersey attorney general is seeking unspecified civil penalties against Discord, according to the complaint.
The filing marks the latest lawsuit brought by various state attorneys general around the country against social media companies.
In 2023, a bipartisan coalition of over 40 state attorneys general sued Meta over allegations that the company knowingly implemented addictive features across apps like Facebook and Instagram that harm the mental well being of children and young adults.
The New Mexico attorney general sued Snap in Sep. 2024 over allegations that Snapchat’s design features have made it easy for predators to easily target children through sextortion schemes.
The following month, a bipartisan group of over a dozen state attorneys general filed lawsuits against TikTok over allegations that the app misleads consumers that its safe for children. In one particular lawsuit filed by the District of Columbia’s attorney general, lawyers allege that the ByteDance-owned app maintains a virtual currency that “substantially harms children” and a livestreaming feature that “exploits them financially.”
In January 2024, executives from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X were grilled by lawmakers during a senate hearing over allegations that the companies failed to protect children on their respective social media platforms.