Funding profile · Oncology patient engagement
Liyfe
A reported $150,000 Y Combinator check is the only investment on the public record. No Form D notice for Liyfe appears in SEC EDGAR, and PitchBook marked the company out of business in August 2023.
Data as of September 25, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.
Rounds at a glance
| When | Round | Amount | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2020 | Y Combinator, Summer 2020 batch | $150,000 | Y Combinator | PitchBook |
| 2021 | PharmStars accelerator, first cohort | Not disclosed | PharmStars; program members include Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca’s Alexion, Boehringer Ingelheim, Takeda, Novo Nordisk, Sumitovant | MedCity News |
| 2020 to 2023 | No later round announced or filed | Not applicable | None found | Not found |
| By Aug 24, 2023 | Company marked out of business | Not applicable | Not applicable | PitchBook |
What the filings show
No Form D notice for Liyfe, Liyfe Clinic or Liyfe, Inc. turns up in a full text search of SEC EDGAR, checked September 25, 2026. That absence does not prove no money changed hands. A Y Combinator check of this size is commonly structured as a SAFE, and small early rounds are sometimes raised under an exemption that does not require a Form D at all, or the notice may simply never have been filed. What it does mean is that there is no SEC document to confirm the amount, the date or the investor count behind the $150,000 figure that Forbes and PitchBook both report. It rests on those two sources alone.
The clearest documentary trail the company left is not financial. In January 2021, Liyfe, Inc., incorporated in Connecticut, filed a US patent application and a companion international application for “Digital Nurse for Symptom and Risk Assessment,” naming Xueyan Chen and Xiaoli Tang as inventors. Both were later marked abandoned, the US case for failure to respond to an office action and the international case as ceased, according to their status on Google Patents. A patent office record cannot confirm or deny fundraising, but it does fix a firm date, January 2021, for the pivot from the Liyfe Clinic telemedicine service toward the “digital nurse” chatbot product, and its abandonment sits close in time to PitchBook’s 2023 out of business marking.
Reading the record
- The only investment figure comes from two sources, not from the SEC.Forbes reported the $150,000 Y Combinator amount at the time of the August 2020 batch, and PitchBook lists the same figure as Liyfe’s total raised to date. No Form D independently verifies it.
- A six figure headline, a four person company.PitchBook’s most recent employee count for Liyfe is four. A $150,000 accelerator check plus whatever PharmStars provided, PharmStars does not disclose its terms publicly, is a small base for building and testing a clinical AI product, which may explain why no later round was ever announced.
- The company changed its product without a matching funding announcement.Liyfe Clinic launched in 2020 as a consumer telemedicine service for breast cancer patients. By the PharmStars cohort in 2021 it described itself only as an oncology and NASH patient engagement chatbot, aimed at pharma sponsors and clinical trials rather than direct consumers. No press release or filing marks a round tied to that shift.
- The ending is inferred, not announced.No shutdown notice, acquisition or wind-down story was found. PitchBook’s “Out of Business” status, dated August 24, 2023, and the same-era abandonment of the patent application are the two independent signals that the company stopped operating, but neither is a statement from the company itself.
Commercial signals
| Signal | Detail | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Regulatory | No FDA 510(k) or PMA record found. | Not found |
| Clinical evidence | No registered clinical trial tied to Liyfe or Liyfe Clinic found. | Not found |
| Partnerships | Referral and product arrangements with fellow YC companies Eva and iSono Health, announced to Forbes in August 2020. No later confirmation found. | Company-stated |
| Pharma accelerator | PharmStars first cohort, December 2021, themed on clinical trial innovation, with pharma members including Eli Lilly and Takeda. | Independent |
| Company status | PitchBook: “Out of Business,” status date August 24, 2023, four employees at last count. | Independent |
What to watch
- Any Form D that might still surface for Liyfe, Liyfe Clinic or Liyfe, Inc., retroactively confirming the reported $150,000.
- Whether founders Lily Tang or Sherry Chen appear as principals on a new company.
- Confirmation, one way or the other, of what happened to the company after the 2021 PharmStars cohort.
The Liyfe story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordFull text search for “Liyfe,” no Form D results
- Public recordUS20220215957A1 and WO2022150324A1, Digital Nurse for Symptom and Risk Assessment
- IndependentLiyfe company profile: valuation, funding and investors
- IndependentFemBeat: YC-Backed Liyfe Clinic Launches An Online Service To Provide Breast Cancer Patients With The Knowledge And Resources They Need
- IndependentFirst cohort of digital health startups graduates from PharmStars accelerator
- CompanyLiyfe startup profile
- CompanyLaunch HN: Liyfe Clinic (YC S20), Telemedicine for breast cancer
- CompanyLiyfe company page
Compiled from SEC and other public records and published reports as of September 25, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Liyfe. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.