Grindr agreed to buy PurposeMed, the parent company of HIV-prevention telehealth provider Freddie, for $250 million in its first major acquisition since its 2009 founding. The price is $190 million in cash plus $60 million in Grindr stock, with up to $70 million more in cash tied to Freddie’s 2027 performance. The deal builds on Grindr’s telehealth business Woodwork, launched in 2025 for weight loss and erectile dysfunction, under a new Grindr Health portal. Chief Executive George Arison said he believes the healthcare business can become as large and profitable as the core dating app, targeting the gap between the 644,000 Americans currently on PrEP and the 2.2 million the CDC estimates could benefit. Freddie expects more than $80 million in 2026 revenue. Multiple outlets including Fast Company and American Banker News confirmed the terms reported by CNBC; the acquisition was announced October 5 and is expected to close in the fourth quarter.
Multiply Labs raised a $75 million Series B to build robotic systems that automate biologic-drug manufacturing, bringing total capital raised to more than $100 million. The round was led by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks, with AstraZeneca, Lingotto, Teradyne and Strange Ventures as new investors. The San Francisco company says its robotic clusters cut cost per dose by 74 percent and raise throughput up to 100 times over manual manufacturing, targeting the cell and gene therapy bottleneck first and expanding to antibodies, viral vectors and mRNA. Corroborated by Medical Design and Development, MobiHealthNews and Strange Ventures.
General Medicine, the “healthcare store” startup founded by the PillPack and Amazon Pharmacy team, raised $120 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Matrix, VXI Capital, Eli Lilly, Mercy Health and BoxGroup, bringing total funding to $152 million. The nationwide platform now lists more than 2,900 products and services across medications, labs, telehealth and specialist e-consults, with insurance and cash prices shown before purchase. TJ Parker joined as full-time CEO in October 2026. Corroborated by Fierce Healthcare and the company’s own announcement; the raise was announced October 6.
NorthStar Medical Technologies secured a multi-year growth capital facility of up to $185 million from Hercules Capital, with $100 million upfront, to scale production of no-carrier-added actinium-225 and expand its Beloit, Wisconsin radiopharmaceutical campus and CDMO. The company, which became the first commercial-scale accelerator-based Ac-225 producer in January 2026, says it already serves more than 30 pharmaceutical and biotech customers. Note the vintage: the announcement is dated September 29, not new today, but it appeared in this week’s trade coverage; corroborated by Business Wire and Pulse 2.0.
The FDA told a federal court in a filing late Wednesday that its safety review of mifepristone will run into 2027: the agency expects to complete its safety study by mid-December 2026 and deliver a report no later than March 2027, after which it will decide whether to impose new restrictions on the abortion pill. The court-ordered update, in a Louisiana case challenging mail delivery of the drug, is the first substantive detail on the reevaluation ordered by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Abortion opponents quickly condemned the timeline. Corroborated by the Associated Press via multiple outlets and STAT.
In executive news reported by Endpoints and not independently confirmed: Viking Therapeutics’ chief commercial officer Neil Aubuchon, hired in January 2026 to prepare the launch of the GLP-1/GIP dual agonist VK2735, is out abruptly, an unusual departure for a pre-launch obesity company; separately, Gilead is recruiting an executive from BeOne Medicines to lead its China expansion. Treat both as single-sourced at grade C.
Also from Endpoints, single-sourced at grade C: Chai Discovery signed a deal with GSK to make biologics with AI, another entry in the steady stream of AI-platform collaborations this year. Note that an earlier Chai-GSK collaboration was reported in January 2026, so the new agreement’s relationship to that work could not be verified. And in a longer-term theme, Endpoints reports that preeclampsia, long ignored by drugmakers, is becoming a focus for the WHO and biopharma, though the article provides no specific program names to verify against.