“I think this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” said Shalek, cofounder and CEO of Valerie Health. “Software, at its best, takes complexity away from the end user that benefits their customers. It creates new experiences, and that hasn’t happened in the last 30 years… Over the next ten years, the experience of going to the doctor will change.” 

To meet the moment, Shalek—who co-founded digital mental health startup Joyable, which was sold to AbleTo—teamed up with Nitin Joshi, cofounder of Uber Health and Stripe engineering leader to start Valerie Health in 2023. Valerie, Shalek says, is “an AI front office” for independent doctors’ offices. 

“All the space that sits between the patient and provider, we’re taking that over and automating as much as possible,” Shalek said. “We automate referrals, we automate faxes, we automate scheduling. But over time, we’re building out a comprehensive platform that can really manage the entire workflow from front to back.”

Valerie Health—named with Shalek and Joshi’s children’s initials—has raised its $30 million Series A, led by Redpoint Ventures, Fortune has exclusively learned. General Catalyst, Primary Ventures, BoxGroup, and Karman Ventures participated in the round, along with 406 Ventures and Waybury Capital. Angels included executives from One Medical, Oscar, Main Street Health, and DoorDash. Valerie has now raised $39 million.  

“The future of healthcare is personalized and proactive,” said Meera Clark, partner at Redpoint Ventures. “Think about the ability to shift an appointment time or get that next appointment on the books—imagine a system has context to reach out to me and schedule based on my preferences, knows my healthcare needs, and knows my risk profile, what I might need to be screening for. You really need a foundation in place to be that proactive and personalized, and Valerie is laying that foundation.”

To Shalek, this isn’t just about a tech-enabled future, it’s the hope for better healthcare overall.

“We live in the U.S., with the best medical care in the world,” said Shalek. “We have incredible therapeutics, incredible diagnostics, incredible surgical capabilities—and yet, we have very mediocre average healthcare. The gap is about getting patients the right care that they need. It’s about democratizing healthcare, not just care for the healthiest and wealthiest people, which is too often what happens.”

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X:@agarfinks
Email:alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Allie Garfinkle curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– Link Cell Therapies, South San Francisco, Calif.-based oncology cell therapy company, launched from stealth with $60 million in Series A funding. Johnson & Johnson Innovation led the round, and was joined by Samsara BioCapital, Sheatree Capital, and Wing Venture Capital. 

– AIR, an AI-powered credit intelligence startup, raised $6.1 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Work-Bench Ventures and Lerer Hippeau.

– Auxira Health, Columbia, Md.-based virtual cardiology company, raised $7.8 million in seed funding. Route 66 Ventures and Abundant Venture Partners led the round, and were joined by DigiTx Partners, American Heart Association Ventures, Ensemble Innovation Ventures, and City Light Capital.

– Soverli, a Zurich, Switzerland-based smartphone cybersecurity company, raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding. Founderful led the round and was joined by the ETH Zurich Foundation and Venture Kick.

Private Equity

– Godspeed Capital agreed to make a strategic investment in NextPoint Group, a Herndon, Va-based technology solutions provider for the intelligence and defense communities. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

IPOs

– Wealthfront, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based financial platform, is going public today with an offering of 34.6 million shares priced at $14 a share. 

Funds + Funds of Funds

–Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based multi-stage venture capital firm, raised $9 billion in capital across six vehicles. 

– Dragoneer Investment Group, a San Francisco-based investment firm, raised $4.3 billion for its seventh venture capital fund. 

Exits

– Freshworks agreed to acquire FireHydrant, a New York-based AI-enabled incident management startup. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

– NVIDIA agreed to acquire SchedMD, a Lehi, Utah-based developer of open-source workload management system Slurm.

Fortune AIQ: The year in AI–and what’s ahead

Businesses took big steps forward on the AI journey in 2025, from hiring Chief AI Officers to experimenting with AI agents. The lessons learned—both good and bad–combined with the technology’s latest innovations will make 2026 another decisive year. Explore all of Fortune AIQ, and read the latest playbook below: 

–The 3 trends that dominated companies’ AI rollouts in 2025.

–2025 was the year of agentic AI. How did we do?

–AI coding tools exploded in 2025. The first security exploits show what could go wrong.

–The big AI New Year’s resolution for businesses in 2026: ROI.

–Businesses face a confusing patchwork of AI policy and rules. Is clarity on the horizon?

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio has described this scenario as an economic “heart attack,” with government investment squeezed out by the need for the country to maintain its debt obligations.

Younger people will face the sharpest end of that outcome, warned Jordan Haring, director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum. Haring, formerly a senior policy analyst at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) wrote in a note this week: “The United States’ high debt load exacerbates generational imbalances. These imbalances will ultimately burden younger and future generations with higher interest payments, slower economic growth, slower income growth, and a greater burden to bear for future tax or spending changes.”

She continued: “Without significant policy changes to reduce debt growth, future generations will inherit a budget where significant resources are locked into servicing past borrowing.”

“As interest costs rise, the federal government will have less money available for education, infrastructure, or scientific research—areas that directly support long-term prosperity. Future taxpayers will face higher tax burdens or reduced government services simply to cover the costs created by previous budget deficits.”

Haring pointed to the discrepancies in budgets between education and health services, for example. Already the gap is large: In 2025, the Department for Education requested $82.4 billion for its budget, while in 2024 Medicaid spending totalled more than $900 billion, per the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.

With an ageing population, it is likely that spending on social care will increase over the coming decades. Lower birth rates will mean fewer entrants into the ranks of the economically active to maintain the revenues gathered by the government.

While the accuracy of the conservative think tank’s research has been criticised in the past, Haring’s stance has been echoed by the likes of BlackRock’s Larry Fink.

Last year, Fink urged corporate leaders and politicians to pursue “an organized, high-level effort” to rethink the retirement system. In a letter to BlackRock investors, Fink wrote: “The federal government has prioritized maintaining entitlement benefits for people my age (I’m 71) even though it might mean that Social Security will struggle to meet its full obligations when younger workers retire.”

He added: “It’s no wonder younger generations, Millennials and Gen Z, are so economically anxious. They believe my generation—the baby boomers—have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.”

The Great Wealth Transfer option

With a shift in economic activity from one generation to the next also comes with new flows of wealth, and this is something governments around the world will be looking to leverage, according to experts.

Studies have found that over the next 20 to 30 years as much as $124 trillion will be passed down from older generations to their younger counterparts, though UBS puts the figure of the “Great Wealth Transfer” at $80 trillion. Baby boomers—people born between 1946 and 1964—are the wealthiest generation in history, and as these individuals begin passing on their assets, sums will go immediately to their Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z successors, and some cash will go to spouses.

“The change in wealth comes at a time when many governments around the world have high debt and deficits. It seems unrealistic to suppose that governments will just sit idly by as this wealth moves around. We would expect governments to attempt to mobilize that wealth to help fund their debt, but in doing so that denies private sector investment access to some of those funds.”

But technical savvy alone does not a leader make. For a glimpse of who’s likely to take the lead in this next era for the Fortune 500, check out theFortune Next to Lead list that’s out this morning. My colleague Ruth Umoh spent months talking to board directors, management consultants, leadership advisors, recruiters, and current and former CEOs to identify 25 rising executives inside the Fortune 500 who exhibit the skills and mindset of a new breed of CEO. 

Candidates were evaluated across several dimensions, from the scale and impact of their role with the enterprise to their vision and influence beyond the company. There’s Josh D’Amaro of Disney, who oversees a worldwide experiences division embarking on a $60 billion expansion of parks, resorts, cruise ships, and next-generation guest experiences. Within Microsoft, Scott Guthrie’s record at Azure has put him at the center of the company’s cloud and AI strategy. Donna Langley at NBCUniversal is redefining the studio’s multi-platform strategy, while General Motors’ Mark Reuss oversees a broad operational portfolio, from engineering and manufacturing to battery strategy and global markets, making him a central architect of GM’s long-term competitiveness. Keep an eye, too, on Marianne Lake of JPMorgan Chase and Kate Gutmann of UPS.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on candidates you think deserve a spot, and what qualities you think will determine success in the next generation of Fortune 500 CEOs.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

New jobs data

Today is a quirky jobs day that will shed some light on the state of the U.S. economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is releasing jobs numbers for November and October. But the data will be patchy because of disruptions caused by the government shutdown; there will be no October unemployment report, for instance. “We’re going to have to look at [the data] carefully and with a somewhat skeptical eye” because it may be “distorted by very technical factors,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said.

PayPal as a bank

PayPal is taking advantage of the Trump administration’s looser rules towards fintech companies and applying to become a bank. The payments company says the designation will allow it to lend more to small businesses. 

Introducing the U.S. ‘tech force’

The Trump Administration on Monday unveiled what it’s calling the U.S. “tech force” of 1,000 early career engineers and other specialists to research and develop AI and financial products for the federal government. Companies like Nvidia, Palantir, Amazon and Google will partner with the government on the initiative and second some of their own top talent to join its ranks. 

Ford’s EV bust

Ford will record a $19.5 billion impairment for the rollback of parts of its EV strategy. The Detroit carmaker is contending with lower-than-expected demand for EVs and plans to halt production of some pure electric vehicles in favor of hybrid models. 

Fed Chair finalists

President Trump could announce his pick for Fed chair before Christmas. Fortune’s Eleanor Pringle introduces us to the finalists and dissects their on-record opinions about the running of the central bank. This weekend, prediction markets were betting that the race had narrowed to a Kevin vs. Kevin contest. 

McKinsey gets lean

McKinsey is planning to shirk its non-client facing departments by about 10% in coming months as it contends with a slowdown in its traditional services and flatlining revenue. Governments in China and Saudi Arabia, for instance, have cut back on using consulting firms. 

Companies’ ‘93-7 split’ 

Bill Briggs, Deloitte’s chief technology officer, told Fortune’s Nick Lichtenberg that companies are pouring 93% of their AI budget into technology and only 7% into the people expected to use it. That lopsided investment is all wrong, Briggs says, since it focuses on the physical “ingredients” of AI and not the culture, workflow, and training needed to make the technology effective.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are down 0.25% this morning. The last session closed down 0.16%. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.05% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.46% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.56%. China’s CSI 300 was down 1.2%. The South Korea KOSPI was down 2.24%. India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.64%. Bitcoin went to $87K.

Around the watercooler

Google cofounder Sergey Brin said he was ‘spiraling’ before returning to work on Gemini—and staying retired ‘would’ve been a big mistake’ by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

Former Meta integrity chief says new report reveals ‘disappointing’ ad fraud epidemic at the social-media giant by Lily Mae Lazarus

‘I had to take 60 meetings’: Jeff Bezos says ‘the hardest thing I’ve ever done’ was raising the first million dollars of seed capital for Amazon by Dave Smith

What happens to old AI chips? They’re still put to good use and don’t depreciate that fast, analyst says by Jason Ma

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.