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American telehealth company Hims & Hers Health announced on Tuesday that it will be acquiring Zava, a leading European digital health company in an all cash acquisition set to close in the second half of 2025. Following the announcement, Hims’ stock price (HIMS) jumped 5.8% in premarket trading. (As of midday Tuesday, the stock was trading up just under one point.) The move will rapidly expand Hims & Hers reach, which has a current base of 2.4 million U.S. customers. As the only digital health company with over a decade of operations across Germany, France, Ireland, and the U.K., Zava has an active user base of 1.3 million. The demand for simpler, more personalized healthcare is universal, said Andrew Dudum, founder and CEO of Hims & Hers, in a press release. By leveraging Zava’s established European presence, cutting-edge technology, and deep customer understanding, we’re poised to fundamentally transform access to care for millions across Europe. Whether in rural towns, vibrant cities, or remote communities across Europe, people battling widespread, often silent chronic conditions like obesity, depression, and more will have access to the personalized, high-quality care they deserve. Expanding to Europe is additionally beneficial because the E.U.s universal healthcare policies make pharmaceuticals much more affordable relative to the U.S. This means that personalized telehealth services like Hims & Hers could become more widely accessible there. The medications are priced more competitively than in the U.S. so more people can actually afford it and we are seeing a huge demand, said Zava CEO David Meinertz in an interview with CNBC. The demand is increasing with additional strains on the statutory systems that telehealth can alleviate. Hims & Hers’ most recent earnings report in May revealed a revenue of $586 million for the quarter, an increase of 111% over the first quarter of last year, as the platform continues to expand. The company’s current market cap is $12.5 billion as of Tuesday.
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Two years after the launch of ChatGPT, return on investment in generative AI has been elusive, but one area stands out: software development. So-called code generation or code-gen startups are commanding sky-high valuations as corporate boardrooms look to use AI to aid, and sometimes to replace, expensive human software engineers. Cursor, a code generation startup based in San Francisco that can suggest and complete lines of code and write whole sections of code autonomously, raised $900 million at a $10 billion valuation in May from a whos who list of tech investors, including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. Windsurf, a Mountain View-based startup behind the popular AI coding tool Codeium, attracted the attention of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is now in talks to acquire the company for $3 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Its tool is known for translating plain English commands into code, sometimes called vibe coding, which allows people with no knowledge of computer languages to write software. OpenAI and Windsurf declined to comment on the acquisition. AI has automated all the repetitive, tedious work, said Scott Wu, CEO of code gen startup Cognition. The software engineers role has already changed dramatically. Its not about memorizing esoteric syntax anymore. Founders of code-gen startups and their investors believe they are in a land grab situation, with a shrinking window to gain a critical mass of users and establish their AI coding tool as the industry standard. But because most are built on AI foundation models developed elsewhere, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepSeek, their costs per query are also growing, and none are yet profitable. Theyre also at risk of being disrupted by Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, which all announced new code-gen products in May, and Anthropic is also working on one as well, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The rapid growth of these startups is coming despite competing on big tech’s home turf. Microsofts GitHub Copilot, launched in 2021 and considered code-gens dominant player, grew to over $500 million in revenue last year, according to a source familiar with the matter. Microsoft declined to comment on GitHub Copilots revenue. On Microsofts earnings call in April, the company said the product has over 15 million users. Learn to code? As AI revolutionizes the industry, many jobs – particularly entry-level coding positions that are more basic and involve repetition – may be eliminated. Signalfire, a VC firm that tracks tech hiring, found that new hires with less than a year of experience fell 24% in 2024, a drop it attributes to tasks once assigned to entry-level software engineers are now being fulfilled in part with AI. Googles CEO also said in April that well over 30% of Googles code is now AI-generated, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last year the company had saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years by using AI. Google and Amazon declined to comment. In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a conference that approximately 20 to 30% of their code is now AI-generated. The same month, the company announced layoffs of 6,000 workers globally, with over 40% of those being software developers in Microsofts home state, Washington. Were focused on creating AI that empowers developers to be more productive, creative, and save time, a Microsoft spokesperson said. This means some roles will change with the revolution of AI, but human intelligence remains at the center of the software development life cycle. Mounting losses Some vibe-coding platforms already boast substantial annualized revenues. Cursor, with just 60 employees, went from zero to $100 million in recurring revenue by January 2025, less than two years since its launch. Windsurf, founded in 2021, launched its code generation product in November 2024 and is already bringing in $50 million in annualized revenue, according to a source familiar with the company. But both startups operate with negative gross margins, meaning they spend more than they make, according to four investor sources familiar with their operations. The prices people are paying for coding assistants are going to get more expensive, Quinn Slack, CEO at coding startup Sourcegraph, told Reuters. To make the higher cost an easier pill to swallow for customers, Sourcegraph is now offering a drop-down menu to let users choose which models they want to work with, from open source models such as DeepSeek to the most advanced reasoning models from Anthropic and OpenAI so they can opt for cheaper models for basic questions. Both Cursor and Windsurf are led by recent MIT graduates in their twenties, and exemplify the gold rush era of the AI startup scene. I havent seen people working this hard since the first Internet boom, said Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, an investor in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor. Whats less clear is whether the dozen or so code-gen companies will be able to hang on to their customers as big tech moves in. In many cases, it’s less about who’s got the best technologyits about who is going to make the best use of that technology, and who’s going to be able to sell their products better than others, said Scott Raney, managing director at Redpoint Ventures, whose firm invested in Sourcegraph and Poolside, a software development startup thats building its own AI foundation model. Custom AI models Most of the AI coding startups currently rely on the Claude AI model from Anthropic, which crossed $3 billion in annualized revenue in May in part due to fees paid by code-gen companies. But some startups are attempting to build their own models. In May, Windsurf announced its first in-house AI models that are optimized for software engineering in a bid to control the user experience. Cursor has also hired a team of researchers to pre-train its own large frontier-level models, which could enable the company to not have to pay foundation model companies so much money, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Startups looking to train their own AI coding models face an uphill battle as it could easily cost millions to buy or rent the computing capacity needed to train a large language model. Replit earlier dropped plans to train its own model. Poolside, which has raised more than $600 million to make a coding-specific model, has announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services and is testing with customers, but hasnt made any product generally available yet. Another code gen startup Magic Dev, which raised nearly $500 million since 2023, told investors a frontier-level coding model was coming in summer 2024 but hasnt yet launched a product. Poolside declined to comment. Magic Dev did not respond to a request for comment. Anna Tong and Krystal Hu, Reuters
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Since the weekend, several major fires have been raging across Canadas central and western provinces. The smoke from those fires is now drifting south across the U.S. border and is significantly impacting air quality in several U.S. cities. Heres what you need to know about the Canadian wildfires and their impact on the United States. Whats happened? Last week, several fires began raging across large portions of Canada, particularly in its central and western provinces, reports CNN. The wildfires are something that happens every year, but in recent years, their range and intensity have grown worse thanks to the drier conditions spurred on by climate change. Data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) shows that as of Monday, June 2, active fires were raging in Canada. Those fires have been classified into four stages of control: 107 are raging out of control 26 are said to being held 68 are under control 7 are out of control and being monitored Of the active fires, 74 are in Canadas westernmost province, British Columbia, which is above the U.S. states of Washington and Montana. The western province of Alberta has the second-highest number of active fires, with 56. Alberta stands above Montana. The central province of Manitoba currently has 25 active fires, followed by Ontario with 19 and Saskatchewan with 16. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario span the northern border of the United States from Montana to New York. While the fires’ most disastrous effects are being felt by the Canadian people who live near their epicenters, residents of the United States are also being impacted due to the smoke from the fires drifting into the U.S. Canadian wildfire and smoke impact maps 2025 There are several good mapping resources for those wanting to track the wildfire outbreak and its smoke effects across Canada and the United States. The first map is maintained by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). The interactive map displays the active fires that are currently raging in Canada. It color codes the fires based on their stage. There are four stages: Under control (blue): The wildfire is completely contained and will be extinguished. Being held (yellow): Given current weather conditions and resources, the wildfire is not anticipated to grow past expected boundaries. Out of Control (Monitored) (purple): Fires with a monitored response type are being observed and assessed, but not immediately suppressed. As there is no suppression action being taken, these fires are considered out of control until declared out for national reporting purposes. Out of Control (red): The wildfire is burning and is expected to continue growing. The map further displays fires in all four stages based on their size, represented by dots of three different diameters. The smallest dots signify that the fire covers 1 to 100 hectares The medium dot signifies an area of 101 to 1,000 hectares The largest dot signifies an area of greater than 1,000 hectares As the CIFFCs map shows, some of the largest fires currently burning out of control are in central Canada, though there are several large fires northwest of Winnipeg, just over Montanas border, that are currently burning out of control. [Screenshot: CIFFC] The second map is provided by AirNow.gov. It displays air quality data from several U.S. government sources, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Park Service, NASA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The AirNow map casts colors across the United States that represent the air quality. Those colors are: Green: good air quality Yellow: moderate Orange: unhealthy for sensitive groups Red: unhealthy Purple: very unhealthy Brown: hazardous The map currently shows that the worst air quality in America is in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Indianathe states directly under some of the worst fires in Manitoba and Ontario. [Screenshot: AirNow] Several cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin are under orange unhealthy for sensitive groups and red unhealthy conditions, including the Duluth and Twin Cities areas of Minnesota, along with Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin. However, much of the central eastern and eastern seaboard of the United States, extending all the way to Florida, is also under yellow moderate air quality conditions due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires drifting south. But some better news is on the horizonat least when it comes to air quality in the United States. p>AirNows map shows that on Wednesday, air quality should improve in the Minnesota and Wisconsin areas, reducing from red unhealthy status to orange unhealthy for sensitive groups only. Unfortunately for Canada, the country is only at the beginning of its annual wildfire season. Already, the nation is at a National Preparedness Level (NPL) of fivethe highest possible and one in which full commitment of national resources is ongoing to support fighting the fires. As noted by CNN, Canada did not reach the NPL level of five last year until July 15. This year, it reached that level on May 28.
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