🐺 9amHealth just raised $26M. It's tackling 70% of employer drug spend.

Chronic conditions drive up to 70% of employer pharmacy spend. Most virtual care companies tackle one of them. 9amHealth, previously focused on Diabetes, just raised $26M to take on the whole stack.

That's the headline. But the deeper story this week might be a marketing automation leader that nobody outside enterprise MarTech is talking about. Or a spatial AI startup, backed by the TL Foundation, rewiring how utilities map the grid.

Howl yeah, let's dive in.

Featured Jobs: 

Head of Electronics Engineering - Seasats ($170,000-$230,000)

Design the brains of Seasats autonomous vessels that crossed the Pacific within meters of a Chinese warship, set the Atlantic speed record, and operate in the Taiwan Strait. CTO direct report. Looking for an engineering leader who loves electronics and loves managing engineers → All open roles 

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9amHealth — 20 Open Remote Roles, SD HQ

Just closed a $26M Series B led by Define Ventures (May 2026). Virtual specialty care expanding beyond cardiometabolic to address the chronic conditions driving most employer pharmacy spend. SD-headquartered, fully remote team.

Why they matter:

Chronic conditions drive up to 70% of every dollar employers spend on prescriptions. Diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart disease. Most are managed reactively, through clinic visits that don't fit how people actually live.

9amHealth built the alternative. Their virtual specialty care platform combines AI-driven personalized treatment plans, at-home monitoring kits, mail-in lab diagnostics, and medication delivery. Patients get one care team, one app, and one plan that adjusts as conditions change.

Recently they closed a $26M Series B led by Define Ventures, with participation from SemperVirens VC, Catalio Capital Management, and NewHealth Ventures. The raise is funding their expansion beyond cardiometabolic care into the broader chronic conditions that account for the majority of employer spend.

San Diego based, founded in 2021.

Momentum signals:

• ~$35M total raised across Series A, Series A extension, and Series B

• $9.5M Series A extension led by The Cigna Group Ventures (February 2024) opened an employer-first distribution channel

• This raise repositions 9amHealth from virtual cardiometabolic care to AI-driven specialty care

Open roles across:

• Clinical Care (7 roles, including Medical Director, Care Delivery)

• Commercial (3 roles, including Strategic Account Executive)

• Data (3 roles, including a new VP of Data)

• Product and Engineering (3 roles, including Senior PM for AI Care Experience)

• Cross-functional senior leadership (4 roles across Customer Success, Marketing, Operations, and People)

• All 20 open roles

This is what Series B execution looks like. If you've helped scale a digital health company through this inflection, every door is open.

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Cordial — 5 Open Remote Roles, SD HQ

Just named a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q1 2026. AI-powered cross-channel platform used by Levi's, L.L.Bean, and Boot Barn. Fully remote team headquartered in San Diego.

Why they matter:

Enterprise marketing teams are drowning in disconnected tools. The email platform doesn't know what SMS is doing and the mobile app doesn't share data with the marketing cloud. And the brand promise of "personalized at scale" turns into "the same campaign sent to everyone with their first name pasted in."

Cordial built the platform that connects it. Their cross-channel system handles email, SMS, mobile app, and push messages from a single data layer. Real-time customer data activation, AI-driven message generation, and identity resolution that knows the same customer across every touchpoint.

In March 2026, Forrester named Cordial a Leader in the Forrester Wave Email Marketing Service Providers Q1 2026 report. One of only three Leaders out of 12 vendors evaluated. Cordial received the highest possible scores in 10 criteria, including identity resolution, dynamic messaging, data governance, and AI roadmap.

AI now accounts for 30% of Cordial's R&D spend. Customers include Levi's, L.L.Bean, Boot Barn, Eddie Bauer, BuzzFeed, and Forbes.

Momentum signals:

• Perfect scores in 10 of 27 evaluation criteria, including identity resolution and AI roadmap

• Founded in San Diego in 2014, $71M raised across three rounds; last raise was a $50M Series C in July 2022

• AI is now 30% of R&D spend, with customers including Levi's, L.L.Bean, Boot Barn, Eddie Bauer, BuzzFeed, and Forbes

Open roles across:

• Client Experience (Senior Client Success Manager, plus a Japan-based Technical Account Manager)

• Engineering (Data Scientist, Production Engineering)

• Sales (Principal Sales Engineer, Strategic Sales Director)

• All 5 open roles

If you've built or sold AI-driven enterprise MarTech and want to work at one of the three companies analysts say is shaping the category, this one is worth a serious look.

Looq AI — 9 Open SD Roles

Spatial AI for infrastructure. Just named a DTECH 2026 Power Player and Constructech Top Products winner. Survey-grade 3D point clouds without LiDAR or drones.

Why they matter:

Utilities and infrastructure teams have a measurement problem. Mapping a substation, a transmission corridor, or a city block in survey-grade detail traditionally requires LiDAR rigs, drone fleets, or expensive ground-based scanners. Each adds cost, complexity, and time before any real engineering work begins.

Looq AI built the alternative. Their handheld photogrammetry plus AI-powered processing turns a smartphone-sized camera and a walk through into a survey-grade 3D point cloud and geospatial dataset. Built for land surveyors, civil engineers, T&D engineers, utility asset managers, and infrastructure owners.

In 2026, Looq was named a DTECH Power Player in the utility innovation cohort. They also won a 2026 Constructech Top Products Award. And in December 2025, they expanded their global partner ecosystem by seven new partnerships across North America, Europe, and Asia.

The company is San Diego based, founded in 2021 by CEO Dominique Meyer, PhD.

Momentum signals:

• Backed by TL Foundation in San Diego

• Launched qPole, an AI-enabled solution that analyzes utility poles to improve grid reliability

• Global partner ecosystem expanded with seven new partnerships across North America, Europe, and Asia (December 2025)

• Founded 2021 by CEO Dominique Meyer, PhD; $3.75M total raised across pre-seed and a $2.6M seed led by BootstrapLabs

Open roles across:

• Engineering and AI (Deep Learning Engineer, Backend Engineer, Front-End Web Developer)

• Product (Jr. Product Engineer)

• Hardware and IT (Electromechanical Assembly Technician, System Administrator)

• Commercial and Customer Success (Business Development Manager, Customer Success Specialist, Technical Support Specialist)

• All 9 open roles

If utilities, civil engineering, or field data capture is where you want to work, this is one of the rare SD options.

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One pattern this week:

Three different sectors. One shared theme. AI is no longer the product pitch. It's the underlying infrastructure. 9amHealth is using it to scale virtual specialty care. Cordial is using it to scale enterprise messaging. Looq is using it to scale how infrastructure gets measured.

The companies hiring most aggressively right now are the ones where AI isn't the headline anymore, but the operating system.

Let's help good people find great San Diego teams.

Jonah 🐺

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