The biggest US health insurer has a $600 million VC arm that places bets on the future of healthcare. Here are Optum Ventures’ 18 biggest investments, including startups reinventing home care and pharmacies.

• Optum Ventures is a $600 million venture fund associated with UnitedHealth Group.
• The fund launched in 2017 and has a focus on digital health, a spokesman confirmed to Insider.
• Here are the 18 biggest investments Optum Ventures has participated in over the last few years.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Like other industry giants, UnitedHealth Group wants to back startups that hope to turn the healthcare industry on its head.

To get in early, UnitedHealth created Optum Ventures, a corporate venture fund that operates as a separate entity from the biggest health insurer in the US. The $600 million fund was created in 2017 just as digital health startups were becoming hot investments across Silicon Valley’s traditional venture-capital ecosystem.

In the first half of 2021 alone, Optum Ventures was the single most active corporate investor, according to a July CB Insights report. According to Pitchbook data, the fund regularly participates in multiple funding rounds for its portfolio companies, upping its stake with each successive round.

To date, Optum Ventures has participated in blockbuster funding rounds for at-home testing startup LetsGetChecked and at-home urgent care startup DispatchHealth, both of which have raised over $200 million according to Pitchbook data. An Optum spokesman in August 2020 declined to specify how much Optum Ventures contributed to each funding round but confirmed the firm’s participation in the deals.

Several investors have told Insider that it’s not a surprise to see so many incumbents battling it out for deals given the current environment: many insurers or hospital systems need to add tools such as telehealth or new ways to manage chronic diseases as the coronavirus-induced lockdowns continue to drag on. The easiest way to accomplish that goal, investors said, was to partner with a startup already specializing in those areas instead of attempting to create those services in-house.

UnitedHealth is a $390 billion healthcare company that operates a health insurer and a pharmacy-benefits manager, runs urgent-care clinics and surgery centers, and provides technology and consulting services to hospitals and other healthcare firms. Optum Ventures is overseen by Larry Renfro, who is also vice chairman of UnitedHealth.

Here are the top 18 deals Optum Ventures, UnitedHealthcare’s $600 million venture fund, has participated in since it was created. The startups are listed by the size of the deals that Optum Ventures participated in, from smallest to largest.

This article was initially published in August 2020 and has been updated to include Optum Ventures’ more recent investment activity in the first half of 2021.