Ash, which operates at poweredbyash.com and is legally Ash Wellness, Inc., builds a white-label platform for at-home diagnostic testing. It does not run a chain of clinics or sell a single blockbuster device. Instead, it hands health plans, digital health companies and public health agencies the pieces they need to launch their own branded testing programs - the kit, the lab network, the patient instructions, the logistics and the reporting - stitched together through one API.
The company was founded in 2019 in New York by David Stein and co-founders Kyle Waters, Mio Akasako, Nick Sempere and Emma Jean Rayner. The origin was personal: the founders had struggled to access healthcare as members of the LGBTQ+ community, and Ash launched first as a direct-to-consumer service mailing sexually transmitted infection tests to people who might never walk into a traditional lab.
Then the pandemic rearranged the map. Demand for at-home testing exploded, and Ash discovered that the more durable business was not selling kits to individuals but selling the machinery of testing to the organizations that serve millions of them. It pivoted from D2C to B2B - the same mission, a much larger lever.
Today Ash says it has shipped more than 500,000 kits and processed over 4 million biomarkers across all 50 states, covering everything from sexual health and cancer screening to heart, kidney, diabetes, fertility and hormonal panels.
Ash goes far beyond simple kit distribution and health testing. Our platform provides an end-to-end experience.David Stein — CEO & Co-Founder, Ash
A partner comes to Ash wanting to test a specific population for specific things - say, a Medicaid plan closing colorectal screening gaps, or a telehealth brand adding hormone panels. Ash lets them pick the biomarkers, brand the kit as their own, plug into a single API, ship to any of the 50 states and see results reported in real time. The complexity is handled behind the curtain.
End-to-end, white-label engine for designing kits, ordering tests, managing fulfillment and reporting through one API integration.
Customizable, population-specific collection kits including dried blood spot testing across dozens of health panels.
A vetted network of CLIA/CAP-certified labs plus provider oversight, enabling compliant results in all 50 states.
Multilingual, multichannel outreach and support built to lift completion rates and close care gaps.
Programs aimed at HEDIS improvement, Star Ratings and care gap closure for value-based care organizations.
Ash's pitch to a health plan is quantitative. These figures are the company's own reported partner outcomes versus traditional lab testing - useful as a signal of the model's advantage, not as audited fact.
Ash's customers are organizations, not shoppers. Its named partners span health plans, digital health platforms, care navigators and public health agencies - among them Gold Coast Health Plan, Accolade, Noom, LifeMD, Sesame, Legacy and Firefly Health. Many patients using an Ash-powered program never see the name Ash at all; the kit arrives in the partner's branding.
That invisibility is the point. Ash positions itself less as a consumer brand and more as infrastructure - the testing rails other healthcare companies build on. Its clearest growth target is Medicare Advantage, where closing care gaps and lifting HEDIS and Star Ratings measures is directly tied to how plans get reimbursed.
The field is crowded. Ash competes with at-home and home-collection players such as Tasso, Getlabs, imaware, LetsGetChecked and the B2B arm of Everly Health, plus the direct offerings of lab giants Labcorp and Quest. Its differentiation is the combination: white-label flexibility, a broad biomarker menu, multilingual engagement and a quality-measure focus aimed squarely at payers.
Backing that thesis, Merck's Global Health Innovation Fund led Ash's $10M Series A in October 2024 - the kind of strategic capital that funds infrastructure, not novelty.
David Stein and co-founders launch Ash as a D2C at-home STI testing service rooted in serving the LGBTQ+ community.
As COVID-19 reshapes care, Ash shifts to helping partners turn on their own at-home testing programs.
Ash expands into care gap closure, HEDIS and Star Ratings programs for health plans.
Merck Global Health Innovation Fund leads the round as Ash targets the Medicare Advantage market.
Named one of TIME's World's Top HealthTech Companies of 2025 after crossing 500,000 kits shipped.
Lands on the DHNY Digital Health 100 list and wins a Healthies Award for Best Brand and Marketing.
Ash was founded by five people who set out to build the care they could not easily find. CEO David Stein is the public face - a Forbes Technology Council member who frames at-home testing as a route to reaching patients the traditional system leaves behind.
Co-founder and chief executive. Leads Ash's B2B strategy and its push into payer and Medicare Advantage markets.
Co-founder, part of the original team that launched Ash in 2019.
Co-founder with a background bridging science and product.
Co-founder, part of Ash's founding team.
Co-founder, part of Ash's founding team.
Sources: poweredbyash.com, TIME, Axios Pro, Healthcare Brew, Crunchbase, Tracxn, Forbes. Reported partner metrics and funding figures reflect company statements and press coverage; some figures are approximate. Compiled July 2026.