Employer health benefits · Fertility and family building
Carrot Fertility
A benefits platform that sits beside an employer health plan and pays for fertility and family building care. It has raised $115 million, signed more than a thousand customers, and published outcome numbers it measured itself.
The card that did not work
Tammy Sun was in her thirties, employed and insured, when she found out what her plan covered.
“This is something I thought was core to my health and I was really surprised when my insurance card was rejected.” She told Forbes she paid out of pocket, a sum the magazine put at roughly $50,000 for three rounds. In a 2025 investor interview she described the same episode as three rounds of egg freezing and put the figure above $35,000. Both accounts are in print and they do not agree.
What she took from it was a payments insight, not a clinical one. Most Americans get coverage at work, fertility care sits outside it, and the people who need it pay first and argue later. In 2016 she left Evernote and named the company after a vegetable, on purpose, to keep the branding out of the pink aisle.
A benefit, not a treatment
Carrot does not run clinics. It contracts with an employer, gives each covered employee a plan and a care team, routes them to vetted providers, and pays by restricted debit card or, more recently, straight to the clinic.
A competitor described the structure in a public filing. Progyny, the only listed company in the category, told the SEC in its 2021 annual report that it competes with benefits managers “such as Carrot Fertility and Maven Clinic, which currently offer employees post-tax reimbursement programs for fertility benefits”, against its own pre-tax design inside the medical plan.
That tax wrapper is the regulatory story of the category. In October 2025 the White House announced actions on in vitro fertilization under Executive Order 14216. In May 2026 Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services proposed a limited excepted benefit for fertility, with a $120,000 lifetime limit and an exemption from many rules under HIPAA, the Affordable Care Act and the No Surprises Act. Comments closed in July 2026. A final rule would create a pre-tax standalone pathway that did not exist when Carrot was designed.
Three founders, two disciplines
Sun brought the consumer technology background. Dr. Asima Ahmad, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist then practising at Fertility Centers of Illinois, became chief medical officer. Juli Insinger was the third co-founder named in the 2021 Forbes account.
The money arrived quickly and then stopped. CRV led an $11.5 million Series A in April 2019. U.S. Venture Partners led a $24 million Series B in August 2020, with F-Prime, Precursor Ventures, Maven Ventures, Uncork Capital and Silicon Valley Bank. Tiger Global led a $75 million Series C twelve months later, with OrbiMed joining. Total disclosed funding: $115 million. Nothing priced has been announced since.
From a hundred logos to a thousand
The customer count is the one metric updated in public year after year. More than 100 companies in August 2020. On track for 450 customers and nearly a million covered lives by the end of 2021. More than 800 in January 2023. More than 1,000 from 2024. By March 2026 the boilerplate said “thousands”, with no figure behind it.
Distribution widened: a preferred vendor slot with the broker WTW in October 2024, including a mid market product, Carrot Engage, and a program with Cigna Healthcare's Global Health Benefits business in March 2025. In August 2025 Carrot said it had added 4,200 US provider contracts to a global network it puts above 17,000.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Regulatory filings | A records pull on September 23, 2026 returned no FDA 510(k) or PMA record, no registered trial, no NIH award and no PubMed indexed paper under the company name. The two NSF awards it surfaced belong to other filers. | Not found |
| 2024 IVF Outcomes Study | Published January 7, 2025. Single embryo transfer rate 94.6%, IVF pregnancy 67%, live birth 55.4%, multiple birth 1.8%, pre-term birth 8.2%, miscarriage 12.7% against a national 16.6%. Carrot tracked its own members against Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology data. | Company-stated |
| Who validated what | Milliman, Inc. found the measurement methodology relative to national benchmarks consistent with industry practices. The same release adds: “Milliman did not review Carrot's methodology for assessing performance compared to competitors.” | Company-stated |
| Marketing versus caveat | The homepage reads: “Carrot has the highest single embryo transfer (SET) rate of any fertility benefits provider, with a methodology independently validated by Milliman.” The competitor ranking is the one thing Milliman said it did not review. | Differs from the release |
| Two numbers, one behaviour | The 2025 investor interview says “Two-thirds of Carrot members choose less invasive options over IVF when appropriate”. The 2026 homepage says “60% of Carrot members opting for less invasive and costly options over IVF.” | Company figures differ |
| Customers, in public record | Roblox listed “Carrot (fertility and family forming), Ginger (mental and behavioral health)” in its Form 10-K. Zendesk, Alteryx and Criteo each named Carrot Fertility in proxy filings between 2021 and 2023. These are the customers' own disclosures. | Public record |
| Customers, company-stated | Box, Snap, Slack, Peloton, Eventbrite, Samsara, Ferring and Reed Smith, 2020 to 2023. A SiriusXM case study claims $2.15 million saved, not independently audited. | Company-stated |
| Security audits | First SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA audits completed June 2020 by Linford & Company LLP, clean opinion. The trust center lists annual third party penetration testing, Azure hosting and AES-256 encryption. No HITRUST and no HHS Office for Civil Rights breach entry were found. | Company-stated |
| Litigation | Hatfield v. Carrot Fertility, Inc., W.D. Kentucky, 3:25-cv-00369, filed June 17, 2025, with default judgment entries that July. O'Regan v. Carrot Fertility, Inc., E.D. New York, 1:26-cv-01902, filed March 31, 2026, an employment discrimination claim naming the company plus Tammy Sun, Jenna Jackson and Robert Spalding. | Public record |
| Securities record | No Form D notice appears under the company name. An EDGAR full text search on September 23, 2026 returned 30 documents, all filed by other companies. | Public record |
Read plainly: the commercial record is checkable, because four public companies put Carrot's name in their own filings. The clinical record is Carrot's own dataset against a national registry, using a methodology an actuarial firm called reasonable. That sits above a marketing claim and below a peer reviewed study. The gap that matters is the competitor ranking, which the company markets and which its own validator declined to examine.
What to watch
- The final excepted fertility benefits rule. A pre-tax standalone pathway changes the shape of the category Carrot helped define.
- A round after the 2021 Series C. Five years is a long silence in a market where the listed comparable booked $1.29 billion in 2025.
- An outcome study published outside a press release, or a Milliman engagement covering the competitor comparison.
- Sprints, the metabolic program presented at an HHS conference in March 2026 with engagement numbers, not outcomes.
- The O'Regan docket, which names the founder personally.
In their words
“This is something I thought was core to my health and I was really surprised when my insurance card was rejected.”
Tammy Sun, founder and CEO, to Forbes, 2021 · Independent
“In my 30s, I decided to freeze my eggs. I was surprised to learn that despite having a great job and health insurance, my three rounds of egg freezing wouldn’t be covered. I spent more than $35,000 out-of-pocket.”
Tammy Sun, F-Prime Capital interview, 2025 · Investor interview
“Truth is, most Americans don’t have $500 in savings, and the ability to pay first and be reimbursed later was always going to be a limiting factor,”
Tammy Sun, to Forbes, 2021 · Independent
“such as Carrot Fertility and Maven Clinic, which currently offer employees post-tax reimbursement programs for fertility benefits”
Progyny, Inc., Form 10-K for 2021, filed March 1, 2022 · Public record
“Carrot’s newest data demonstrates that our program helps members achieve their family-building goals with fewer, more effective IVF cycles that result in healthy singleton births.”
Dr. Asima Ahmad, co-founder and chief medical officer, January 2025 release · Company release
“Milliman did not review Carrot’s methodology for assessing performance compared to competitors.”
Carrot Fertility, January 7, 2025 outcomes release · Company release
“We’ve seen Progyny hold up as a public stock more so than other healthcare companies that have fallen away,”
Carl Byers, partner, F-Prime Capital and a Carrot investor, to Business Insider, 2023 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordRecords pull: no FDA, trial, NIH or PubMed record
- Public recordEDGAR full text search, 30 documents, no Form D
- Public recordRoblox Corp Form 10-K, fiscal 2021
- Public recordZendesk, Alteryx and Criteo proxy filings
- Public recordProgyny, Inc. Form 10-K, competition section
- Public recordProgyny fourth quarter 2025 results
- Public recordCourtListener RECAP dockets, Hatfield and O’Regan
- Public recordExcepted Fertility Benefits proposed rule
- IndependentUnderstanding the White House Executive Order on IVF
- IndependentFertility Startup Carrot Raises $75 Million, Series C
- IndependentCarrot Fertility closes $24 million Series B
- IndependentCarrot Fertility Banks $24M Series B
- IndependentCarrot banks $75M to expand fertility benefits
- IndependentThe fertility business is booming
- IndependentFamily-friendly benefits take off
- InterviewBehind the Build: Q&A with Tammy Sun
- CompanyCarrot Publishes Results of New Clinical Study
- CompanyCarrot Exceeds National Benchmarks for Fertility Success
- CompanySOC 2 Type II and HIPAA audits, and Trust Center
- CompanyWTW and Cigna partnerships, provider expansion, Sprints research, website
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
