Ethos, a Silicon Valley insurance startup backed by Robert Downey Jr., Will Smith, and Jay-Z, recently closed a $60 million round of funding, CNBC reports.
The Series C Round was led by Alphabet’s venture unit, GV, and was participated in by Goldman Sachs. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Accel also joined the round.
Ethos offers term insurance but dispenses with the copious paperwork and medical tests. Instead, it uses data analytics instead to predict a person’s life expectancy.
Applying for insurance nowadays is akin to being “medically and financially strip searched,” Ethos CEO Peter Colis told CNBC, adding that many of their clients apply through their phones. The company says that it takes less than 10 minutes to apply for a policy at Ethos, a sliver of the “weeks” it normally takes to get coverage.
The fresh round raised the company’s valuation to nearly $500 million, up from an over $100 million valuation it posted late last year. Revenues have quadrupled and staff has tripled since then, but Ethos remains unprofitable. Colis, however, said that they’re getting more profitable with each new customer, adding that they’re very different from the loss-making Ubers and Lyfts of the world:
“We’re very different from Uber and WeWork,” Colis said. “We still have the majority of capital raised from last round fundraising. This round was opportunistic rather than necessary. It was just based on our fast growth and desire to move even quicker in disrupting the life insurance industry and protecting families.”
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