News
Hinge Health to acquire Cylinder Health for $105M, expanding AI-powered virtual care into gastrointestinal disease
Hinge Health signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cylinder Health, a virtual GI care provider, for $105M in cash. Cylinder serves nearly 100 enterprise clients and approximately two million covered lives, with distribution partnerships across two of the three largest pharmacy benefit managers. Hinge plans to integrate Cylinder's clinical model into its AI platform to create a single app combining musculoskeletal, pelvic health, migraine, and gastrointestinal care — targeting a GI disease market affecting one in four U.S. adults and accounting for an estimated $135B in annual healthcare spend.
- acquisition
- digital-health
- GI
- musculoskeletal
- virtual-care
The strategic logic behind this acquisition is multimodal virtual care consolidation, and it is a pattern worth watching across the digital health space. Hinge Health built its business on musculoskeletal care — back and joint pain — which gave it enterprise payer and employer contracts, a clinical AI platform, and a direct-to-member engagement infrastructure. Adding GI care via Cylinder is not about building new tech; it is about loading a new clinical program onto a distribution and engagement infrastructure that already exists.
GI conditions — IBS, Crohn’s, GERD, functional bowel disorders — affect approximately 25% of U.S. adults and are among the most chronically undertreated categories in employer health benefits. Most employer health plans do not have a formal GI benefit beyond specialist referrals, which means care is expensive, episodic, and often reaches patients only after years of symptoms. A virtual-first GI program embedded in the same app where a member’s physical therapist-guided exercise plan lives is a different model: earlier intervention, coordinated around the same engagement layer.
The PBM distribution partnerships that Cylinder brings (two of the three largest) are an underappreciated part of the deal value. PBMs are increasingly acting as digital health distribution channels — bundling virtual care programs into formulary management contracts — and relationships inside the two largest PBMs provide Hinge Health with a commercial path that does not depend entirely on direct employer sales or health plan deals.
Hinge Health went public in 2025 and has been trading above its IPO price. The all-cash structure of this acquisition means no equity dilution, but $105M in cash is material for a company still scaling toward profitability. Watch Hinge’s Q3 earnings call for management’s commentary on the integration timeline and where GI care fits in their path to positive operating cash flow.
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Primary source: Read the full original on Hinge Health ↗