Alba Health, a Swedish-Danish startup focused on gut health and personalized nutrition for children, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding.
The startup was founded in 2022 by Eleonora Cavani, CEO, and Professor Willem Meindert de Vos, its chief scientific officer and a microbiome scientist with more than 800 research publications.
By offering gut microbiome tests, personalized nutrition plans, and one-on-one calls with a certified children’s nutrition coach, the startup is aiming to tackle a problem Cavani knows firsthand.
“I grew up with a lot of allergies,” Cavani told Business Insider. “I was that one kid that couldn’t play outside with the others during the spring. I missed out on so many experiences.”
Cavani said that at age 27, severe eczema turned her “life upside down.” After resolving her own eczema and chronic pain through gut-focused lifestyle changes, Cavani said she teamed up with de Vos to build Alba and help families address childhood gut health before problems emerge.
Cavani told BI that de Vos’s research shows the gut microbiome in the first years of life can help predict allergy risk later on.
“Our long-term mission is to reduce the risk of allergies and eczema,” Cavani said. “But right now, we help families make better choices in their children’s and their family’s diet and lifestyle for the best start in life.”
She added, “We don’t diagnose or cure allergies. What we do is help families with wellbeing — and nothing we offer should replace going to doctors.”
Alba’s clinical approach is backed by over 1,600 scientific publications and its own study, which, in partnership with top universities, tracks the gut microbiome development in more than 300 Swedish families.
The seed round was led by Unconventional Ventures, with support from Exceptional Ventures, Voima Ventures, Noaber, Bust, and the founder of Oura Ring, a smart device company.
“In the next five years, gut health has the potential to become the new sleep,” said Oura founder Petteri Lahtela, referring to the recent boom in sleep tracking technology.
Alba plans to use the fresh funding to grow its digital platform, invest in further clinical research, and reach more families across Europe and the UK.
Here’s the pitch deck Alba Health used to raise its $2.5 million seed round.
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