Ethos Applied sciences, a San Francisco-based supplier of software program for promoting life insurance coverage, debuted on the Nasdaq on Thursday. As one of many yr’s first main tech IPOs, the insurtech platform is being intently watched as a bellwether for the 2026 itemizing cycle.
The corporate and its promoting shareholders raised roughly $200 million within the providing, promoting 10.5 million shares at $19 every underneath the ticker image “LIFE” — one of many extra on-the-nose selections in current reminiscence. The identify matches. Ethos runs a three-sided platform the place shoppers purchase insurance policies on-line in 10 minutes with out medical exams. It says over 10,000 impartial brokers use its software program to promote these insurance policies and that carriers like Authorized & Basic America and John Hancock depend on it for underwriting and administrative providers. Ethos itself isn’t an insurer — it’s a licensed company incomes commissions on gross sales.
Although the corporate’s inventory closed its first day as a public firm at $16.85, 11% beneath its IPO worth of $19, Ethos co-founders Peter Colis and Lingke Wang nonetheless have lots to have fun, having grown the 10-year-old enterprise to public-market scale.
“Once we launched [the business], there have been like eight or 9 different life insurtech startups that regarded similar to Ethos, with related Sequence A funding,” Colis advised TechCrunch. “Over time, the overwhelming majority of these startups have pivoted, been acquired at subscale, stay at subscale or gone out of enterprise.”
For example, Policygenius, which raised over $250 million from traders, together with KKR and Norwest Enterprise Companions, was acquired by PE-backed Zinnia in 2023. In the meantime, Well being IQ, a startup that secured greater than $200 million from outstanding VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, filed for chapter that very same yr.
Ethos, which has raised over $400 million in enterprise capital, might have simply succumbed to the same destiny. As an alternative, the corporate remained laser-focused on reaching profitability because the period of low cost capital and simple fundraising got here to an finish in 2022. “Not figuring out what the continued funding local weather can be, we bought actually severe about guaranteeing profitability,” Colis mentioned.
That monetary self-discipline remodeled it right into a worthwhile firm by mid-2023, in keeping with its IPO paperwork. Since then, Ethos has additionally maintained a year-over-year income progress price of greater than 50%. In the 9 months ending September 30, 2025, the corporate generated nearly $278 million in income and just below $46.6 million in web revenue.
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Nonetheless, the corporate ended its first day as a public firm with a market capitalization of about $1.1 billion, a valuation that’s considerably beneath the $2.7 billion it garnered in its final personal spherical led by SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 2 in July 2021.
When requested why Ethos went public, Colis mentioned {that a} large a part of the rationale was to deliver “extra belief and credibility” to potential companions and purchasers. He defined that as a result of many main insurance coverage carriers are over a century outdated, being publicly traded indicators the corporate’s endurance.
The biggest outdoors shareholders of Ethos embrace outstanding corporations, together with Sequoia, Accel, Google’s enterprise arm GV, and SoftBank, in addition to Basic Catalyst and Heroic Ventures. Sequoia and Accel didn’t promote shares within the IPO, the corporate disclosed.