ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Device company Allurion recently went public through a SPAC co-led by the former CEO and executive chair of Medtronic, to increase market penetration of its intragastric balloon and expand its weight-loss care suite for patients and providers.
In August, Allurion Technologies went public via a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) transaction, raising $100 million, $30 million more than it originally set out to raise when it first announced the deal in February 2023. The complex deal involved a merger with Compute Health, which, chaired by Omar Ishrak, PhD, the former CEO and executive chairman of Medtronic, went public in 2021 with the sole purpose of accomplishing such a business combination.
Allurion is thus prepared to float on the rising tide created by the introduction of the effective GLP-1 class of weight-loss drugs, heavily promoted by billions of dollars in direct-to-consumer advertising by their pharmaceutical developers. According to Allurion CEO Shantanu Gaur, MD, “That has created a tremendous amount of awareness around obesity as a disease and of weight loss as something that should be administered by a physician in a medical practice. Millions of people are now coming into this ecosystem of medical weight loss.”
