Funding profile · Reproductive health

Modern Fertility

Twenty two million dollars of venture capital, raised in three steps, sold four years after founding for a reported figure ten times larger. Nothing about the financing appears in SEC records, because nothing was ever filed.

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

What the filings show

Reading the filings

1. A $22 million company with no Form D is unusual but legal.Regulation D is one route to a private placement exemption, not the only one. An issuer relying on Section 4(a)(2) alone files nothing with the SEC. Three priced rounds and an acquisition left no federal paper trail, so every funding figure here rests on press releases rather than a sworn filing.
2. The brand name was never the legal name.The company operated as Modern Health, Inc. doing business as Modern Fertility. Anyone searching EDGAR, state filings or litigation dockets for the consumer brand finds nothing. An EDGAR company search on the legal name returns nothing either, so neither the brand nor the entity produces a federal record.
3. The exit multiple is about ten times disclosed capital.$225 million against $22 million raised is 10.2x. For comparison, the buyer had raised $876 million to $897 million by May 2021 at a $5 billion valuation, so the purchase was roughly 4.5% of Ro’s own paper value.
4. Majority stock means the headline number is soft.Axios described the deal as majority stock. Ro’s $5 billion mark came from a $500 million Series D led by existing investors in March 2021, two months before the deal. A price paid mostly in the shares of a private company, valued at an inside round, is an estimate, not a receipt. No acquirer disclosure exists because both parties were private.
5. The capital stopped two years before the exit.The last announced round closed in June 2019. There is no Series B, no bridge and no announced extension in the record between then and May 2021. Either the business funded its own growth, which the reported 300% first quarter revenue growth would support, or a later round went unannounced and unfiled.
6. Non-dilutive funding is absent.No NIH award, no NSF SBIR and no FDA submission appear under the company name. The research was paid for out of venture capital and a founder’s savings, and it ran on consenting customers rather than enrolled trial subjects.

Commercial signals

What to watch

• Any Ro liquidity event. Modern Fertility shareholders were paid mostly in Ro stock, so the realized value of the exit is still unsettled.
• Whether the brand survives as a product line or is folded into Ro’s wider women’s health offering.
• Afton Vechery’s next company, the first chance to see how investors price the second act.
• Any state level action on direct to consumer laboratory tests now that the federal rule is gone.

The Modern Fertility story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

• NimbleRx: Shared investor: First Round. Nimble began as a licensed dispensing pharmacy with its own stores, shut them in early 2019, and rebuilt itself as the software layer sold to the independent pharmacies
• C16 Biosciences: Shared investor: First Round. A New York company that brews a palm oil substitute in yeast rather than growing it on cleared rainforest
• 64x Bio: Shared investor: First Round. A Harvard spinout that engineers the cells which manufacture viral vectors, rather than the therapies those vectors carry
• Reverie Labs: Shared investor: First Round. A Cambridge company that used machine learning to design brain penetrant kinase inhibitors for cancer

Sources

1. Public recordEDGAR company and full text search for Modern Fertility, Modern Health and Afton VecherySEC · run Sep 23, 2026
2. Public recordFunding disclosure naming Modern Health Inc. doing business as Modern FertilityFertility and Sterility · Jun 2023
3. Public recordLaboratory Developed Tests rule statusFDA · Sep 19, 2025
4. IndependentThis newly funded startup wants to help women gauge their reproductive health a lot sooner in lifeTechCrunch · May 31, 2018
5. IndependentModern Fertility Raises $6 Million For At-Home Reproductive TestsForbes · May 31, 2018
6. IndependentModern Fertility raises $15 million to sell its hormone testsTechCrunch · Jun 11, 2019
7. IndependentRo acquires Modern Fertility in a deal north of $225 millionTechCrunch · May 19, 2021
8. IndependentRo will acquire women’s health startup Modern Fertility in $225M dealFierce Healthcare · May 19, 2021
9. IndependentHealth care startup Ro acquires Modern FertilityFortune · May 20, 2021
10. IndependentModern Fertility co-founder leaves Ro a year after M&ATechCrunch · May 9, 2022
11. InterviewHow Afton Vechery Sold Modern Fertility for $225 MillionThe Helm · Sep 14, 2021
12. CompanyModern Fertility Announces its $15 Million Series APR Newswire · Jun 11, 2019
13. CompanyRo acquires Modern Fertility to accelerate its leadership in women’s healthRo · May 19, 2021
14. CompanyModern Fertility company profile, total raised and investor listY Combinator · accessed Sep 23, 2026

Compiled from SEC, FDA and peer reviewed public records and published reports as of September 23, 2026. No Form D notice was located for this issuer; private placements may be exempt without any SEC filing, so the absence of a filing is not evidence that no money moved. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Modern Fertility or in Ro. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.