From Pre-Diabetic Triathlete to Metabolic Health Pioneer: Sami Inkinen’s Health Moonshot with Virta Health

At Apollo House 2026, StartUp Health community member Sami Inkinen of Virta Health delivered a clear message: Type 2 diabetes is reversible, and it should be the common-sense standard of care.

Inkinen’s journey began far from healthcare. He grew up on a farm in Finland, co-founded Trulia, took it public, and helped reshape real estate. But a personal wake-up call changed everything. Despite being a world-class triathlete, he discovered he was pre-diabetic. He realized that you cannot outrun a bad diet, and that metabolic dysfunction is not simply a matter of willpower.

That moment sparked the founding of Virta Health, a company built to reverse metabolic disease using nutrition as therapy, supported by technology and AI.

Today, Virta is treating hundreds of thousands of patients and generating more than a hundred million in annual revenue. The company reached break-even last year while growing 75% year over year, crossing what Inkinen described as the first major hill in healthcare innovation: proving sustainability in a B2B2C model where, as he noted, “innovation often goes to die.”

Virta’s approach combines in-house clinicians with AI-powered tools. On the operational side, the company has made AI-native capability a requirement across every role. On the patient side, Virta leverages one of the world’s largest longitudinal biomarker datasets in metabolic disease reversal to deploy AI agents that support patients around the clock, always supervised by clinicians.

Inkinen is candid about the challenge. The “thorn in his side” is that insulin-first, chronic progression care remains the default in America. Meanwhile, he says, reversal is happening every day at scale. For him, the ultimate health moonshot is making disease reversal through nutrition the common-sense approach.

The impact is deeply personal for patients. Some have even tattooed the Virta logo on their bodies. Inkinen sees this not as branding, but as a manifestation of what patients often tell the team: “You gave me my life back.”

As AI accelerates at an exponential pace, Inkinen is energized by the moment. He believes founders must be AI-native from day one and established companies must harness AI in service of real outcomes, not hype. For Virta, that outcome is clear: reversing metabolic disease at scale.