If it lands in its current price range of $18 to $20 a share, it will enter the day valued at $1.26 billion on the high end ' raising $102.6 million for itself and about $108 million for its selling shareholders. Should investor interest be high, it could wind up pricing higher. That means a bigger valuation and more money raised. The company, which offers software to sell life insurance, is backed by Sequoia, Accel, Alphabet's venture capital arm GV, Softbank, General Catalyst, and Heroic Ventures. Sequoia and Accel are not selling shares in the IPO, the company disclosed. Ethos was a rising startup star in the pre-AI era, raising one big round after another through 2021. In its early rounds, it was backed by a who's who of family offices, including those of Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Durant, and Jay Z, the company told TechCrunch in 2018. Ethos is profitable and has been for years, its IPO documents disclose. In the nine months ending September 30, Ethos generated almost $278 million in revenue and just under $46.6 million in net income....

Dec. 15, 2025 ' the deadline for enrolling in a marketplace plan through the Affordable Care Act for 2026 ' came and went without an agreement on the federal subsidies that kept ACA plans more affordable for many Americans. Despite a last-ditch attempt in the House to extend ACA subsidies, with Congress adjourning for the year on Dec. 19, it's looking almost certain that Americans relying on ACA subsidies will face a steep increase in health care costs in 2026. As a gerontologist who studies the U.S. health care system, I'm aware that disagreements about health care in America have a long history. The main bone of contention is whether providing health care is the responsibility of the government, or of individuals or their employers. The ACA, passed in 2010 as the country's first major piece of health legislation since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, represents one more chapter in that long-standing debate. That debate explains why the health law has fueled so much political divisiveness ' including a standoff that spurred a record-breaking 43-day-long government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, 2025....

Nirvana Insurance, an AI-based commercial insurance platform for the trucking industry, has raised a $100 million Series D round at a $1.5 billion valuation, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively. The raise comes just over nine months after the startup raised $80 million in a Series C round of funding at an $830 million valuation. Put simply, Nirvana's goal is to build 'the world's first AI-powered operating system for insurance.' The startup uses real-time driving telematics and 30 billion miles of truck-driving data to build and manage insurance policies for truckers. CEO Rushil Goel started Nirvana in 2021 after spending years running product at Samsara, an AI-powered fleet management and safety platform. There, he said, he saw firsthand how heavily safe and responsible trucking fleets 'were penalized by the rising costs of one-size-fits-all insurance rates based on old industry data.' His goal with Nirvana is to use the telematics data those fleets already generate 'to build a more fair and transparent model.' Nirvana has trained its models on more than 30 billion driving miles and vehicles' telematics that show details such as speed, selected routes and driver behavior....

Health insurance premiums in the U.S. significantly increased between 1999 and 2024, outpacing the rate of worker earnings by three times, according to our newly published research in the journal JAMA Network Open. Premiums can rise if the costs of the medical services they cover increase. Using consumer price indices for the main components of medical care ' such as services provided in clinics and hospitals as well as administrative expenses ' based on federal data and data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, we found that the cost of hospital services increased the most, while the cost of physician services and prescription drugs rose more slowly. Some of the premium increases can be attributed to an increase in hospital outpatient visits and coverage of GLP-1 drugs. But research, including our own, suggests that premiums have rapidly escalated mostly because health system consolidation ' when hospitals and other health care entities merge ' has led hospitals to raise prices well above their costs....