Funding profile · Health systems software and lending
Helium Health
Two announced equity rounds totalling $40 million, no securities filings anywhere in the public record, and a lending book whose size is known mainly because an independent outlet asked. This is what the documents support.
Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.
Rounds at a glance
| When | Round | Amount | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Y Combinator batch | Not disclosed | Y Combinator | Independent |
| May 2020 | Series A | $10.0M | Co-led by Global Ventures and Africa Healthcare Masterfund (AAIC); Tencent, Ohara Pharmaceutical, HOF Capital, Y Combinator, VentureSouq, Chrysalis Capital, Kairos Angels, Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Company | Release, confirmed by Reuters |
| Nov 2021 | Acquisition of Meddy (Qatar) | Undisclosed | Meddy had raised about $1.8M before the deal | Independent |
| Nov 2022 | Gates Foundation grant | $499,870 | Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 22 months | Grant record |
| Jun 2023 | Series B | $30.0M | Led by AXA IM Alts; Capria Ventures, Angaza Capital, Anne Wojcicki, Flatworld Partners; existing Global Ventures, Tencent, Ohara, LCY Group, WTI, AAIC | Release, widely reported |
| Nov 2024 | GSMA Innovation Fund grant | Amount not disclosed | GSMA, with UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office support | Grant record |
What the public records show
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation · committed grant INV-046250 · November 2022
- Amount
- $499,870
- Duration
- 22 months
- Division
- Gender Equality; Global Health
- Topic
- Discovery and translational sciences; maternal, newborn, child nutrition and health
- Grantee location
- Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, Nigeria
- Region served
- Africa
GSMA · Innovation Fund for Humanitarian Challenges · November 2024
- Purpose
- Add geospatial mapping, USSD and robocall alerts to the HeliumDoc platform for flood-prone regions
- Context cited
- 2022 floods damaged more than 22.9 percent of health facilities in the target states
- Deployment
- Delta and Bayelsa states, announced July 2025 with the state governments
- Amount
- Not published
US International Development Finance Corporation · Nigeria health sector SME lending
- Guaranteed party
- First City Monument Bank Limited
- Guaranty
- $7,000,000 over 9 years
- All-source funding
- $10,000,000
- Helium Health
- Not named in this or any other DFC public information summary found
SEC EDGAR · no filings
- Form D
- None under the company name or any related vehicle
- Other federal records
- No FDA clearance, registered trial, NIH or NSF award
- Implication
- Round sizes rest on company releases and the reporting that followed them
Reading the filings
- Forty million dollars over seven years, and then quiet.The 2023 round was three times the 2020 round. Nothing has been announced in the 39 months since June 2023, which is longer than the 37 months between the two rounds.
- US securities records do not see this company.There is no Form D, so nothing here has a filed first-sale date, investor count or amount sold to check the press releases against. A company incorporated in Nigeria that raises from Dubai, Tokyo, Shenzhen and Paris need never file one.
- The loan book grew in size faster than in reach.June 2023: $3.5M across more than 200 facilities, about $17,500 each. September 2025: $10.9M across more than 460 facilities, about $23,700 each. That is 3.1 times the capital and 2.3 times the borrowers in 27 months. The stated target was 1,000 lending customers by 2024.
- The DFC partnership has no counterpart document.The Series B release names the DFC as the partner for that 1,000 facility target. DFC publishes a summary for each transaction, and the one covering health sector SME lending in Nigeria names a bank, not Helium Health. Absence of a summary is not proof of absence of a deal, but three years on there is nothing to read.
- Grant money is small in dollars and large in scope.The Gates grant is $499,870, about 1.2 percent of announced equity, and the maternal health consortium it sits alongside covers 250 facilities.
- The cap table is corporate, not classic venture.An insurer (AXA IM Alts), an internet group (Tencent), a Japanese drug maker (Ohara) and a Taiwanese chemicals group (LCY) hold positions. Global Ventures took a board seat at the Series A, per its general partner at the time.
Commercial signals
| Signal | Detail | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | No figure in any public record. In 2020 the CEO said the company was profitable with revenues in the millions of dollars. Nothing since. | Company-stated |
| Footprint | Six African markets plus Qatar and the UAE, 150 staff across 10 countries (2023). | Company-stated |
| Named customers | Paelon Memorial, Lagos (2020). Yanga Dental, Lagos, a 25 million naira borrower (2025). | Independent |
| Government | Ekiti State memorandum with Sterling Bank, July 2021, a pilot of about 300 million naira over five years across four facilities. Akwa Ibom and Lagos work listed by the company. | Independent and company |
| Institutional validation | Gates Foundation and GSMA grants; IFC TechEmerge award 2020; Endeavor Entrepreneur selection 2021. | Public record |
| Evidence gap | No audited accounts, no valuation, no disclosed loan loss rate, no published evaluation of clinical or health outcomes. | Not found |
What to watch
- A Series C, or a secondary. Three years without an announced round is the most informative number on this page.
- Any DFC, IFC, British International Investment or Proparco disclosure that names Helium Health, which would put a verified figure on the credit business.
- Loan performance. Repayment is described as high by the company and by its credit team; no default or provisioning figure has been published.
- Whether the 1,000 facility lending target, set for 2024, is restated or quietly dropped.
- Any Nigerian or Gulf regulatory filing that would put audited revenue into the public record.
The Helium Health story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordCommitted grant INV-046250
- Public recordHelium Health grantee page, GSMA Innovation Fund
- Public recordPublic information summary, First City Monument Bank health SME guaranty
- Public recordPulled record set showing no Form D, FDA, trial, NIH or NSF match
- IndependentAfrican startup Helium Health closes $10 million funding round
- IndependentNigeria’s Helium Health raises $10M Series A for Africa expansion
- IndependentHelium Health gets $30M, backed by AXA IM Alts and 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki
- IndependentInside Helium Health’s innovative healthcare financing model
- IndependentHeliumCredit is financing Africa’s private clinics, one loan at a time
- IndependentEkiti govt partners Helium Health, Sterling Bank on digitisation of hospitals
- CompanyHelium Health secures $10 million in Series A financing round
- CompanyAnnouncing Helium Health’s $30M Series B
Compiled from Gates Foundation, GSMA, DFC and SEC public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. No Regulation D filing exists for this company, so round figures come from company releases and contemporaneous reporting rather than filed documents. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Helium Health. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.
