Challenges for raising funding in Healthtech in 2026

The brand as a tool for raising capital

1.1 More money, but in fewer hands

During 2025 we have seen how the Digital Health sector has undergone a fundamental change. Although global funding has risen by 19% to reach $22.3B, the number of agreements (deal count) has fallen by 12% annually, marking its lowest level in a decade. What does this mean? That the market no longer wants experiments. We are in the era of hyper-selection: investors are concentrating their money in a small group of companies that demonstrate indisputable solidity.

1.2 The $5.3M wall in investment rounds

Today, the vital figure for any founder is that the average size of rounds has increased by 39%, reaching a record of $5.3M (median). This number acts as an inexorable barrier for many: to access these tickets, it is no longer enough to have good technology or clinical validation; a brand that generates trust is needed. Many startups with brilliant technology are failing because they remain stuck in a "project identity" (when it exists) and cannot make the leap to a brand that is perceived as solvent.

1.3 Clinical AI: When technology becomes the norm

AI captured 42% of investment in 2025, generating a saturation that has turned the technology into a commodity. Moreover, AI itself is not a strategy; it is a tool, a "how", but in very few cases the "why" or the intangible "territory" that makes the company unique. When nearly the entire market claims to use language models or computer vision, the competitive advantage stops being the algorithm. Real differentiation shifts towards the authority that the brand generates. Without a unique, ethical, and human narrative, companies become trapped in a price and functionality war that dilutes their value.

1.4 The road to Exit: A brand Ready to go

With IPOs at a minimum, sales to large corporations (M&A) are the main exit route for the company. But the corporate buyer (like a Big Pharma) seeks assets that are ready to be integrated into its ecosystem. If your brand seems inconsistent or lacking rigor, the buyer perceives an "integration risk". Financially, this translates into paying you less for your Goodwill (the intangible value of your company).

But not all paths to exit go through total sale, the current market also shows a growing trend towards the purchase of minority stakes by large corporations. In these cases, the brand is even more critical: the investor not only buys your technology, they buy the right to associate their name with yours. If your brand does not have the necessary institutional rigor as an organization, the reputational risk for the corporation is too high, blocking investments that could provide you with the financial breathing room necessary without losing control of the company.

The cost of appearing amateur

2.1 The brand as the main asset in risk management

In a market where investors are injecting tickets of $5.3M, the scrutiny over governance and the robustness of the company is total. Although capital is abundant, risk tolerance has decreased. This is where the brand plays a key financial role: it is the visible face of your risk management. A startup with a fragmented brand - contradictory messages or poor aesthetics - sends an alert signal about the maturity of the management team. If the company cannot manage its own image professionally, the investor assumes it also cannot rigorously manage a budget of several million euros.

2.2 The big mistake of disguising a brand

Many founders make the mistake of trying to patch this problem with superficial aesthetic tweaks. However, a brand is not a logo or an aesthetic, but the sum of decisions and actions that give direction to the company to eventually occupy a preferred place in the minds of its audiences.

A brand is not painted, it is built. It is born from a purpose, shaped with a vision, and strengthened with coherence. Everything a company does, every word, every gesture, every experience, leaves a mark that defines its identity beyond any corporate manual. When we understand that a brand is the result of everything we decide to be - and not just what we show - we start to manage it with intention. We stop thinking about "how we want to be seen" and start thinking about "how we want to mean something". This is what truly helps to generate trust and visibility in a market.

If there is no prior strategic work that helps the business to be perceived as a leader in a category, design will not compensate for that lack. And faced with two similar technologies, the investor, who understands the real value that the brand brings to the business, will always know what to choose. Not investing in the brand today is accepting a lower valuation tomorrow.

2.3 Maximizing the sale value (Goodwill)

As mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are the main exit route for investors, the brand ceases to be a concept to become an accounting seat. In an acquisition, the difference between the value of tangible assets and the final sale price is recorded as Goodwill (Intangible Asset). A solid brand maximizes this value because it reduces the integration cost for the buyer, transfers the trust already gained from the regulator and the physician, and avoids positioning conflicts due to a clean architecture.

2.4 The trust multiplier in the health sector

Unlike other sectors, in healthtech trust is a clinical requirement. A brand that seems amateur generates a psychological barrier for the prescribing physician. If the physician does not perceive the brand as a serious company, product adoption decreases and valuation plummets. The solution is not to appear as a super modern tech startup, but to appear infallible.

Critical questions for self-analyzing a brand

3.1 Should I seem like an algorithm? The 42% of disputed investment

Clinical AI is no longer just another niche, it is the engine that is driving the market. However, this volume of capital has led to all players ending up with the same value propositions. It is time to ask yourself: Does my company perceive itself as a software experiment with AI steroids or as a Health Institution? Is the important thing "my" algorithm or the complete experience I have designed for the doctor to be more precise during and in the pre and post-operative stages?. The real goal is often to capture the investor's trust, translating the power of the code into safety for the patient and profitability for the system.

3.2 Is my brand ready for $5.3M? The three axes of validation

For a healthtech startup to be investable above the market median, it must at least be able to answer with solvency in three integrated areas:

Verbal Validation: Do we speak a language that is understood simultaneously by the physician (rigor), the regulator (compliance), and the investor (scalability)? We need to assess whether we are using generic promises or a specific category thesis.
Visual Validation: Does our visual ecosystem project real solidity? Beyond a logo, typography, iconography… is the visual identity different from that of the other players in the category? Are we conveying what we need to convey?
Product Validation: Do we have the appropriate user experience to meet the target KPIs with each product type user? Does the visual identity resonate in the interface? If the tool seems unprofessional or is in terms of usability, clinical validation loses value in the eyes of the investor automatically.

Without entering into brand architecture or products, CX and others; this should be the minimum necessary that we must comply with to present ourselves to an investor and ensure that apart from being good, we also look it.

3.3 Am I working from strategy and common sense?

More than a creative phase, building authority requires a method of auditing and activation that responds to the speed of the ecosystem:

Gap Diagnosis: Identify the distance between your technical reality and your brand perception, analyzing the credibility leakage points.
Definition of the Core Strategy: Decide what territory you will lead to avoid being another commodity in a saturated AI market.
Activation and deployment: Build the tools that the market demands beyond the product itself, from the Pitch Deck to a digital presence that projects institutional authority.

3.4 The result: The brand as an investment asset

By reflecting on these points, the startup stops competing on price to compete on the value of the asset. The ultimate goal is to project the maturity of a $100M company long before the funds have been raised, aligning with the corresponding series tickets. In a low-agreement environment, the brand is the best risk management tool a founder can present to a committee.

The real return on your brand investment

4.1 Price inelasticity and market authority

In the health sector, the purchase or adoption decision is usually not based on cost savings, but on mitigating the fear of failure. A brand that projects authority allows the company to be price inelastic: we know that the customer (whether a hospital or a pharmaceutical company) does not choose you for being 5% cheaper, but because your brand reduces clinical and operational risk. Authority has a price.

4.2 The brand as a shield against Big Tech

The entry of giants like Amazon, Google, or Apple into the health space is a reality. However, these companies often face a perception problem: the lack of ethical focus and clinical proximity. This is where a well-built brand becomes a competitive advantage to defend against the giants. A startup that projects itself as a human, ethical, and deeply specialized brand in its niche generates a barrier to entry that the massive capital of Big Tech cannot easily buy.

4.3 A magnet for top talent

The success of a healthtech depends on its ability to attract two extremely scarce profiles that are not originally related to the base product: top-level AI engineers and medical opinion leaders (KOLs). These professionals are not only looking for a salary; they seek to belong to projects where they feel important and that have a clear purpose. A brand with vision drastically facilitates the recruitment of this talent, reducing recruitment costs and improving retention.

4.4 The Goodwill multiplier in the final valuation

As we have seen in the previous points, in a sale scenario (M&A), a solid brand increases the company's goodwill. This is not just accounting theory; it is the difference between whether a buyer applies a multiplier of x5 or x8 on your EBITDA. By presenting a Ready to go brand, you eliminate future repositioning costs that the buyer would have to assume, and that directly reflects in the final cheque.

The cost of inaction

The CB Insights report is not just a collection of data, but serves as a warning to founders: more capital is available ($22.3B), but selection criteria have hardened inexorably.

Operating today under an amateur or commodity brand is not a way to save resources; it is a decision that weighs down the company's valuation. Every month that a healthtech operates with a brand that does not project its real value, it is yielding ground to competitors who have understood that the brand is the most powerful validation asset in the current market.

Paul Rand - Transformed American design. | B4F #37 ›