Description
Cue Health is a publicly-traded San Diego, California-based healthcare technology company that develops portable diagnostic tests for at-home use. The company developed the first FDA-authorized COVID-19 diagnostic test for at-home and over-the-counter use without a prescription and physician supervision.
History
Cue Health was founded as Cue, Inc. in San Diego in 2010, by Ayub Khattak and Clint Sever. Khattak became the company's CEO, and Sever became Chief Product Officer.
In November 2014, the company raised $7.5 million in a series A round led by SherpaVentures and Immortalana. Early investors included actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and political strategist Jim Messina.
In June 2018, the US health agency Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $14 million to the company, now named Cue Health, to develop an inexpensive rapid molecular influenza test. In July, the company closed a $45 million Series B round.
In June 2020, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Cue Health for its point-of-care COVID-19 test. Also in June, the company closed a $100 million Series C funding round, with participation from Decheng Capital, Foresite Capital, Madrone Capital Partners, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, ACME Capital and others. In October, the Department of Defense awarded Cue Health a $481 million contract to scale-up its manufacturing and distribute 6 million COVID-19 molecular tests across 10 U.S. states, including Alaska, Florida and Texas. The program assisted fishing industry workers in Unalaska, Alaska, who could not easily socially distance, nor access laboratory testing services. In November, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced it had used Cue's COVID-19 test to safely operate its bubble in Orlando during the 2019-20 NBA season.
In March 2021, the FDA granted Cue Health an EUA for its at-home, non-prescription, over-the-counter molecular COVID-19 test. In April, the company announced its Cue for Schools program to provide K-12 schools and universities with its COVID-19 test. In September, the company went public under the symbol "HLTH" on the NASDAQ at a valuation of about $2.3 billion. In October, the company announced it would be serving as the NBA's official home and point of care COVID-19 testing provider for the 2021–22 season, marking its third straight year of partnership with the league. In November, the company began selling its test directly to consumers. In December, American news magazine Newsweek named Cue Health's home Covid test as one of its favorite products of the month.
In January 2022, Google's parent Alphabet announced they were offering Cue's home tests to employees. It was also reported that Google's cloud division had partnered with Cue Health to develop real-time COVID-19 variant tracking and sequencing, giving Google access to testing and variant data. Also in January, Fast Company reported that the Cue Health reader was one of Google's most popular employee perks.
