The company isn’t a well-known name in Silicon Valley, but its investors certainly are.
San Francisco-based Ethos Technologies Inc. was founded last year, the product of two Stanford MBAs. The company’s core product is a streamlined, and affordable process for buying term insurance — which pays out benefits if the insured dies within a certain time frame. Ethos just raised $11.5 million in a round led by Silicon Valley luminary Sequoia Capital. Other investors in the round, however, were less predictable, including the venture fund of Jay Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation, Robert Downey Jr.’s Downey Ventures, basketball star Kevin Durant’s Durant Co. and Will Smith’s Smith Family Circle.
While life insurance may not seem like a typical focus for Hollywood moguls, more and more venture capitalists are piling into the insurtech space. According to a May report from research firm CB Insights, the