Last night in San Francisco, something unmistakable happened.
Standing room only. A line around the block. Founders, funders, health system leaders, technologists, and investors from across the world converged for APOLLO HOUSE – StartUp Health’s flagship gathering during JPM Healthcare Week. What unfolded was more than an event. It was a signal.
APOLLO HOUSE is about ideas and intention. A reminder – especially at this moment of exponential change – that progress doesn’t arrive by accident. It’s built by people who refuse to accept the world as-is and choose instead to reach for the moon, together.
Fifteen years ago, StartUp Health launched with a bold 25-year mission: to achieve a family of Health Moonshots capable of improving health for billions of people. The formula has always been simple and enduring:
Health Transformers × network effects = Health Moonshots.
Technology has leapt forward. The equation remains the same.
Today, we’re standing at a rare inflection point. Billions of people now effectively carry a doctor in their pocket – available anytime, in any language. In just the past weeks, major breakthroughs across AI, cloud, and compute have reshaped what’s possible in health. The constraint is no longer science or technology. It’s human intention. What do we choose to race toward?
That question wasn’t theoretical at APOLLO HOUSE – it was embodied by the people and world-leading companies in the room. The depth of leadership underscored just how consequential this moment has become. The conversation spanned investors who have shaped entire industries, operators building category-defining companies, and executives deploying AI and care at national scale – including Stacy Feld of Johnson & Johnson; longtime StartUp Health investor Esther Dyson; legendary investor Vinod Khosla; Sami Inkinen, founder and CEO of Virta Health; StartUp Health investors Glen Tullman of Transcarent and Lee Shapiro of 7wire Ventures; Rasu Shrestha, EVP and Chief Innovation & Commercialization Officer at Advocate Health; and Angela Shippy, Senior Physician Executive at Amazon Web Services. With leaders from NVIDIA, Google, and Amazon on stage, rarely do venture, big tech, healthcare delivery, and mission-driven capital align so clearly around a shared belief: the age of superintelligence can – and must – be harnessed in service of health for all.
As Unity Stoakes shared in his opening remarks:
“We are at the point on the exponential curve where health moonshots transition from improbable dreams to practical outcomes that matter – to all of humanity.”
That theme echoed throughout the evening. Speaking on stage with Stoakes, Vinod Khosla captured what may be the defining challenge of this next era:
“The most important currency we have in healthcare is trust. We have to build trust in the technology.”
From intimate fireside conversations to a cross-sector, all-star panel spanning cloud, AI infrastructure, diagnostics, and care delivery, the message was unmistakable: 2026 is fundamentally different than even two or three years ago. The opportunity ahead is no longer about whether we can build transformative health solutions – but whether we have the courage, alignment, and intention to do so.
A special thanks to our amazing partners and sponsors who helped make APOLLO HOUSE possible:
Want to sponsor our next APOLLO HOUSE? Let’s connect.
Unity Stoakes with Stacy Feld of Johnson & Johnson, Margaret Laws of Hopelab, and Glen Tullman of 7wire Ventures and Transcarent.
On stage with Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures; Sami Inkinen of Virta Health; and panels featuring leaders from Amazon Web Services, Labcorp, Advocate Health, NVIDIA, Amazon, DHHF, and more.
StartUp Health co-founders Steven Krein & Unity Stoakes with long-time friends, investors, and mentors, Esther Dyson and Vinod Khosla.
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