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Women’s health tech company Materna Medical raised an additional $5.7 million in funding, the first close of a $20 million Series B2 funding round led by medtech investing firm InnovaHealth Partners.
The Mountain View, California-based company has developed two products to treat pelvic floor conditions and has raised a total of $57.6 million over seven funding rounds, according to Crunchbase.
"We’re thrilled to have completed the first close and excited about the investors still seeking to participate in the final close later this year,” Tracy MacNeal, Materna Medical’s president and CEO, told Healthcare Brew. “Given the unmet needs in maternal health, investors can see the tremendous opportunity for both social impact and a great return on investment."
Materna Medical’s flagship product, the Milli Vaginal Dilator, is designed to treat people with vaginismus, a disorder characterized by involuntary tensing of the muscles surrounding the vagina, according to Cleveland Clinic. The Milli device received FDA clearance in 2023 to be sold over the counter.
The company’s second product, called Materna Prep, was created to help reduce pelvic floor injuries that occur during childbirth. More than 300,000 people—or roughly 10% of people who give birth vaginally—require surgery after childbirth each year due to pelvic floor injuries, according to a 2024 study from the University of Michigan.
In a pilot study, the Materna Prep device led to a 60% reduction in pelvic floor injuries for first-time vaginal births, according to Materna Medical.
The company plans to use the new funding to “obtain FDA marketing authorization for Materna Prep and support the commercial launch of this transformative technology,” Ariella Golomb, Materna’s board chair and InnovaHealth Partners’s founder and partner, said in a statement.
Zooming out: Investments in the femtech industry—which encompasses technology focused on the health needs of cisgender women as well as transgender and nonbinary people—have risen in recent years.
The industry brought in more than $50 billion in global funding in 2021 and is expected to bring in $103 billion by 2030, according to Statista.
In the US, the femtech industry brought in $481 million in 2023, a 5% increase over 2022, as Healthcare Brew previously reported. But women’s health still makes up a small percentage (2% or $823 million) of overall US healthcare funding as of 2023.
“The women’s health and sexual health space is massively underserved. And it’s only recently with a new demographic of venture capitalists that we’re seeing investments go toward other areas besides fertility,” Carli Sapir, founding partner at Amboy Street Ventures, a venture fund dedicated to women’s health and sexual health startups, previously told Healthcare Brew.