New surgeon general nominee cofounded ‘biowearables’ startup with DOGE operative

Health | The Verge – Read More

Levels’s first product was a continuous glucose monitor connected to a $400-per-month health tracking app.

Before she was chosen as Donald Trump’s latest nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Casey Means came from the world of healthcare startups – and cofounded one with a tech entrepreneur who’s now a key Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operative in charge of dismantling the IRS.

In 2019, Means, a holistic medicine doctor who rose to prominence in the Trump-adjacent Make America Healthy Again movement (also called MAHA), launched Levels, a biowearables and health-tracking company, with Sam Corcos, who’s now leading efforts at DOGE to construct a “mega API” that compiles American taxpayers’ data. The company, whose first product was a blood glucose tracker connected to a $400-per-month subscription app, received tens of millions of dollars funding over the past several years – notably from Andreessen-Horowitz’s venture capital arm a16z, which led its $12 million seed round and its Series A round.

“Both the health of our people and the fiscal solvency of our country are at stake,” Marc Andreessen, now a Trump advisor and a critical player in the rise of the tech right, said in a press release announcing its Series A extension back in August 2024. “Levels is a case study of the …

Read the full story at The Verge.