Montréal-based Eli Health has secured $17 million CAD ($12 million USD) in Series A funding to support the launch of its flagship hormone-monitoring technology product. The equity round was led by a new backer in BDC Capital’s women-focused Thrive Venture Fund.
Founded in 2019 by CEO Marina Pavlovic Rivas and CTO Thomas Cortina, Eli Health aims to help women track their hormonal health over time with its patent-pending, United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-registered Hormometer, which recently won the Best of Innovation in Digital Health award at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
After investing nearly six years in research and development (R&D) and closing a major financing for a Canadian tech startup focused on women’s health, Eli Health claims it has reached commercial readiness for its initial two hormones and is ready to bring its offering to market.
“They’ve built the science, technological platform, and manufacturing infrastructure to lead the category.”
Mona Minhas,
BDC Capital
The healthtech startup has made its platform available in beta for cortisol—often referred to as the stress hormone—and opened up a waitlist for progesterone, which plays an important role in reproduction. These mark the first of many hormones Eli Health eventually hopes to help customers track through its platform.
“We raised this funding to accelerate access to our technology and get it into the hands of people at scale,” Rivas told BetaKit.
“It will also enable us to expand manufacturing, advance the development of additional biomarkers, and deepen our role in the future of personalized health,” Rivas added.
Rivas noted that hormones play a role in governing stress response, sleep, cognitive and physical performance, metabolism, immune function, and more. But she argued that data on hormone levels has generally been tough to obtain because it is “too expensive, sporadic, and slow to offer the insight people need.”
Eli Health’s at-home, saliva-based hormone-testing solution combines a thermometer-like single-use cartridge for obtaining spit samples with a mobile app designed to measure users’ hormone levels within minutes and offer improvement recommendations. Its subscription plans start at $8 per test for a 12-month commitment, with flexible options available.
The startup’s Cortisol Hormometer falls under general wellness guidelines, while its Progesterone Hormometer is FDA-registered. Eli Health hopes to achieve Health Canada approval later this year.
“Hormonal health is rapidly emerging as one of the most important frontiers in personal wellness,” BDC Capital Thrive Venture Fund partner Mona Minhas, who has joined Eli Health’s board, said in a statement. “Eli Health recognized this shift early. Through years of focused execution, they’ve built the science, technological platform, and manufacturing infrastructure to lead the category. We’ve been following Eli Health’s journey since the start, and it has been inspiring to see their bold vision become reality.”
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This round was supported by new investors Montréal-based Accelia Capital and Vancouver’s Telus Global Ventures (after a prior investment via Telus’ Pollinator Fund for Good), plus US-based Rocana Ventures and Swizzle Ventures, Japan’s Nextblue, and Brazil’s IKJ Capital.
Existing investors also took part, including US-based Muse Capital and Foreground Capital, Montréal-based Real Ventures, Toronto-based Leva Capital, and Kitchener-Waterloo’s Garage Capital. Rivas declined to disclose when the round closed, whether there was any secondary capital involved, or what valuation this gives Eli Health.
This brings Eli Health’s total funding to approximately $28 million CAD ($20 million USD). That figure includes a $1.9 million CAD initial seed round from 2021 and another $5 million CAD in seed financing from 2023.
Eli Health is one of a number of startups developing new, at-home hormone-testing solutions. These kits have been marketed as a means of giving users more clarity on their health and fertility, though some experts have argued that they could just lead to more confusion.
Women’s healthtech has been historically underfunded. Rivas claimed that this is the largest round ever raised by a women’s health-focused tech startup in Canadian history.
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“This round signals that it’s possible—and necessary—to build transformative health technology from the ground up in Canada,” Rivas said. “We didn’t follow a playbook or replicate what others were doing elsewhere. We developed proprietary biochemistry, hardware, and AI-enabled software from scratch. We built in-house manufacturing.”
Some other Canadian femtech financings in recent years include Coral’s $4.1-million seed round, Afynia Laboratories’ $5-million seed round, Future Fertility’s $7.6-million Series A, Twig Fertility’s $8-million Series A, and Pollin Fertility’s $20-million Series A. Meanwhile, a Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association database search did not yield a larger result.
Rivas claimed that Eli Health has been built for “long-term resilience,” adding that, “early investments in our own R&D, [intellectual property], and in-house manufacturing mean we’re less exposed to supply chain volatility and tariffs.”
“Our vision is a world where everyone has a live feed of their biology—where checking your hormones with saliva is as routine as brushing your teeth,” Rivas said.
As Eli Health continues to execute on that plan, the 20-person startup plans to use its Series A capital to support its early commercialization efforts, ramp up production, and widen its hormone-tracking capabilities.
Feature image courtesy Eli Health.