IM8, the wellness brand founded by former footballer David Beckham and health sciences company Prenetics, has scored US$1bn in growth funding from venture capital fund General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF).
The deal will see General Catalyst funding 70% of IM8’s marketing spend as it seeks to boost its customer base.
General Catalyst will receive a capped share of income tied to customers acquired via the financing.
After the investment and capped return costs have been recovered by General Catalyst, IM8 will keep 100% of the customer value.
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Typically companies take investment in return for shares in the company, or reinvest profit back into the business to grow it.
However, the partnership with General Catalyst offers a “third way”, Prenetics said in a statement.
“The rationale for the CVF partnership is structural rather than liquidity-driven,” the statement read, outlining that it has $139.7m in cash and assets.
“Historically, high-growth consumer businesses have faced a binary choice when scaling customer acquisition: raise dilutive equity capital, or hold back on growth to preserve cash reserves.
“The CVF represents a third way: no-dilution, risk-aligned, cohort-matched capital that is purpose-built to finance customer acquisition and is repaid only from the revenue those customers generate.
“This allows IM8 to invest more aggressively in brand and marketing – powered by its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven acquisition engine – while preserving Prenetics’ balance sheet for the product innovation, clinical research, and strategic opportunities where its cash is the appropriate funding source.”
IM8 launched in December 2024 and has two supplement drinks, Daily Ultimate Essentials and Daily Ultimate Longevity.
The subscription-based supplement programme has $200m in annualised run-rate revenue, according to the company statement.
“19 months ago, IM8 was an idea David Beckham and I were building around one belief: that people deserve premium science-backed products they can trust every day,” said Danny Yeung, CEO of Prenetics and co-founder of IM8.
General Catalyst's $1bn commitment “validates the strength of the cohort economics we have built”, he added.
Yeung said that for every dollar IM8 has spent acquiring customers, this has returned $1.44 in gross profit, with that number “rising each month”.
“With this financing we can now accelerate brand and marketing across our 43 countries without issuing a single share to fund it — a structure that keeps every dollar of shareholder value with our shareholders,” said Yeung.
“Our ambition is to build a multibillion-dollar global consumer health brand. This partnership materially accelerates that path.”
IM8 intends to deploy the cash across marketing and sales in the 43 markets the brand operates, as well as new markets and product categories.
Marketing will include digital performance marketing across all major platforms, offline and connected TV media, ambassador and athlete partnerships, brand activations and sponsorships, content production, as well as retention marketing.
Adit Swarup, Partner at General Catalyst who led the deal, said: “IM8 is a category-defining consumer health business, and the underlying cohort economics are among the strongest we have seen across the Customer Value Fund portfolio.
“Their cohort retention data is remarkable: highly consistent across geographies, subscription tenors, and product lines, with quarterly renewal rates setting new industry benchmarks for direct-to-consumer health.
“When you combine IM8’s best-in-class unit economics, a repeatable customer acquisition engine across 43 countries, and a founding team led by Danny Yeung with the cultural reach of a co-founder like David Beckham, you have exactly the kind of business the CVF was built to accelerate.
“We believe this partnership can help solidify IM8 as one of the leading global consumer health brands of the coming decade.”
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