Outcome Health raises over $500 million
Outcome Health raised more than $500 million from investors, led by Goldman Sachs, Pritzker Group Venture Capital and Google's parent company, Alphabet.
It's one of the biggest deals ever for a Chicago technology company.
When the deal closes in a few weeks, it's expected to raise about $600 million and value Outcome (formerly called ContextMedia) at $5.5 billion or more, the highest for any Chicago venture-backed company in the past decade, according to PitchBook, a Seattle-based research firm. The only company to raise more money in a single round was Groupon, which landed $950 million in early 2011 at a $4.8 billion valuation, not long before it went public.
Shah and Agrawal were unique in Chicago startup circles in having built a profitable company to $100 million in sales with no outside capital. They retain control of Outcome Health, even after taking in the outsize investment. The financing puts the company on a path to a likely IPO in the next few years, but Shah says it's not the only option.
"It was really important to us to maintain our independence and governance of the business because Shradha and I are motivated by more than just profits," he told me.
Shah declined to go into great detail about the exact structure of the deal, but said the investors will get common equity in "the company that will ultimately go public, which has an interest in our operating company." The terms "allow us to continue to be mission-led, and it protects the flexibility of the company to remain private or go public."
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http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...oogle-pritzker