In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, Thyme Care gets new leadership, the intestinal illness spreads, Chai Discovery confirms its $400 million raise, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
Thyme Care founder Robin Shah (left) and incoming CEO Brad Diephuis
Thyme Care
Thyme Care founder Robin Shah will step down as CEO, effective September 1, six years after launching the company to help patients navigate their cancer care. Taking over: Dr. Brad Diephuis, a primary care physician and cancer survivor, who has been the company’s co-president and chief operating officer for the past two years.
“We found our Steve Ballmer,” Shah tells Forbes, noting that he knew—even if Diephuis didn’t—when they first met five years ago that this would be his succession plan for the business.
The leadership change comes just nine months after Thyme Care reached a valuation of $1.1 billion, roughly double what it was worth at its previous funding in 2024. The Nashville-based startup has raised a total of $275 million from investors that include CVS Health Ventures, Humana, Foresite Capital, Town Hall Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.
Shah, 39 and an alum of oncology data company Flatiron Health (acquired by Roche for $1.9 billion in 2018), will become executive chairman of the company. In that role, he’ll lead Thyme Care’s expansion into new areas that include drug affordability and clinical trial access, with help from AI and automation. “My number one focus is let’s make sure the patient wins,” he says.
Cofounder Dr. Bobby Green, 60, a medical oncologist and also an alum of Flatiron Health, will remain in his role as president and chief medical officer.
Management changes at VC-backed startups often come at inflection points, whether because a company has hit a roadblock or because it’s preparing to go public. At Thyme Care, the business looks strong: Revenue surpassed $125 million last year, roughly five times that of 2024, and it’s on track to more than double this year. The business is profitable. It currently manages more than $6 billion in oncology spending and could see that number rise to $8 billion this year through new and expanded health plan partnerships.
In a meeting with Thyme Care’s team on Monday to discuss the leadership change, Shah and Diephuis told employees that the company had grown so fast that it needed a CEO who could focus on that scale–while freeing its founder to continue to come up with new ideas.
“People see a CEO transition and say, ‘Is something wrong? Did they have to make a change?’” says Diephuis, who is 40 and previously worked as a senior advisor at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, where he led the development of alternative payment models. “This is a CEO transition from a position of strength. Robin is a visionary. … My focus and strengths have been how do you take something that’s working and optimize it to work better.”
For Diephuis, Thyme Care’s business is also personal: In his 20s, he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, going through 20 rounds of chemotherapy and spending 115 nights in the hospital over a two-year period. While it’s been 15 years since then and he now just has annual check-ups with his oncologist, he recalls his confusion over what the next step of treatment was supposed to be. At one point, while recuperating from surgery at home, he called his oncologist to ask—and was told they’d been waiting for him to get in touch to schedule necessary chemotherapy. “I was like, ‘Well, was anybody going to reach out to me?’” he says. “I thought to myself, ‘What a crazy system.’”
Helping patients deal with that crazy system is at the core of Thyme Care’s business. It currently serves 125,000 people navigating cancer care, and works with more than 14,000 oncologists nationwide and 14 health insurers, including Humana and Aetna. For those whose cancer care Thyme Care managed, it reduced emergency room admissions by 28%, according to an impact report that the company released today. That’s a big deal both for the people who avoided the ER and for healthcare costs–and helps explain how the company cut costs for insurers. In one case, for example, a Medicare Advantage customer saw its costs fall by 10%.
“It’s easy to reduce costs by doing less. It is hard to improve quality while reducing cost,” says Diephuis. Having shown that’s possible, he now figures that Thyme Care could double the number of patients it serves over the next two years.
Nasty Intestinal Illness Spreads
Authorities are reportedly investigating Taco Bell’s role in the outbreak.
getty
The nasty intestinal illness, cyclosporiasis, is spreading with 31 states now detecting its presence. The CDC said that 843 people reported the disease–caused by a parasite and characterized by explosive diarrhea–and that it’s aware of more than 1,500 cases that require further analysis. Michigan alone has now reported 3,309 cases, including 44 people who have been hospitalized.
Michigan officials suggested Monday that lettuce or salad greens may be the cause. On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that federal and state health officials are investigating whether Taco Bell restaurants played a role in the outbreak. Meanwhile, local Detroit media reported that some Detroit-area Taco Bells had posted notices that it was currently unable to sell lettuce, cilantro, onion, pico de gallo or guacamole due to a nationwide recall. Taco Bell said on Tuesday that it had removed limited items from its menu, but that “public health officials have not confirmed a link to Taco Bell or any specific ingredient, supplier, restaurant or retailer.”
Previous outbreaks have been linked to fresh produce, including raspberries, basil, cilantro and lettuce.
Washing produce might help cut the risk of disease, but it won’t eliminate it. More effective is cooking all produce as heating food to 158 degrees Fahrenheit or higher kills the parasite.
The Trump Administration had previously scaled back monitoring of food-borne illness, including cyclosporiasis. “I don’t think it’s in our country’s interest to cut these programs back,” former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield told CNN on Monday. “Surveillance is sort of the key to early identification.”
Chai Discovery Confirms $400 Million Funding
AI drug discovery startup Chai Discovery announced that it has raised $400 million in new funding at a $3.8 billion valuation led by Index Ventures. Forbes profiled the buzzy company last month and said then that it was in talks to raise that level of new investment.
Drug discovery is one of the great promises of AI. Scientists and investors alike hope that AI models could upend the laborious process of creating new therapies and yield treatments for previously “undruggable” targets. On that promise, San Francisco-based Chai has signed deals with drug giants Pfizer and Eli Lilly since the beginning of the year.
Deal of the Week
Apollo Global Management agreed to buy a $3.4 billion minority stake in Bayer’s contraceptives unit. The long-acting reversible contraceptives business will remain part of Bayer’s pharmaceuticals division. That business, whose products include hormonal intrauterine devices, had sales of $1.6 billion last year, up 8% from 2024. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
What We’re Reading
What a father’s $70 million pursuit of gene therapy to save his daughter Grace means for the entire field.
Already the biggest pharma by far, Eli Lilly disclosed 11 biotech acquisitions in the first half of 2026.
A mother who claimed her 18-month-old twin toddlers died of routine vaccinations–and became an antivaxxer and plaintiff of RFK Jr.’s nonprofit–has been charged with murder.
Apnimed, which developed a sleep apnea drug, filed for an IPO. (Forbes profiled Apnimed earlier this year.)
Oxford began the first human trial of a vaccine for the strain of Ebola spreading in Congo and Uganda.
As states absorb Medicaid funding cuts, family caregivers–who have previously been able to receive payments from their states–face financial ruin.