Ensemble Health, a major player in healthcare revenue management, is seeking a potential $13 billion sale or IPO next year, Business Insider has learned.
Ensemble, owned primarily by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Berkshire Partners, has tapped JPMorgan to pursue a sale, five people with knowledge of the deal told Business Insider.
At the same time, Ensemble is considering an IPO and has pulled in Goldman Sachs to support the dual-track approach, three of the people said.
It’s aiming for a valuation of around $13 billion in either deal, according to those people.
Ensemble is the latest PE-backed healthtech company to plan a major sale or IPO for early next year in a sluggish venture-backed healthcare IPO market.
Tech has enjoyed a number of blockbuster VC-backed IPOs this year, from Figma to Klarna. But regulatory and market uncertainties, plus higher standards for IPO candidates, have pushed back the hopeful go-public dates of many healthcare startups compared to their profitable PE-backed peers.
Ensemble Health hasn’t begun accepting bids and won’t kick off that process until the first quarter of 2026, multiple people told Business Insider. Ensemble is now bringing in about $700 million in earnings before expenses like tax and interest, the people said.
The Financial Times previously reported in May that Ensemble was considering a sale that could value it up to $12 billion. It’s now aiming for a higher price, multiple people said.
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs declined to comment for this story. Ensemble Health didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The “dual-track” process— considering a sale and an IPO at the same time — has become common among healthcare companies seeking an exit, multiple people told Business Insider. For some companies, exploring M&A and IPO possibilities at the same time affords more flexibility to companies and their shareholders in times of volatile M&A or IPO markets.
The approach can also help the selling company create competitive tension to drum up hype and increase its price tag.
Venture-backed Hinge Health and Omada Health both made their public market debuts earlier this year, after Business Insider first reported their IPO plans in mid-2024.
But no healthcare startups have tried to follow in their footsteps since then, and no concrete plans for 2026 IPOs from the VC-backed cohort have emerged.
RCM on the rise
Founded in 2014, Ensemble Health sells software to help hospitals collect more revenue, using AI and other analytics tools to reduce claim denials and speed up payments.
Ensemble previously planned to IPO in 2021, but withdrew its IPO in November 2021 shortly before its IPO shares were priced, citing adverse market conditions.
The next year, Berkshire Partners and Warburg Pincus bought a majority stake in Ensemble from Golden Gate Capital. That deal valued Ensemble at over $5 billion.
Companies like Ensemble Health are rushing to apply AI to back-end healthcare tasks in the face of healthcare’s labor crisis and declining reimbursements. That fervor has led to billions of dollars in revenue cycle management deals in the past year.
Public revenue cycle management company Waystar bought Iodine Software for $1.25 billion this month. PE firms TowerBrook and CD&R acquired then-public R1 RCM in an $8.9 billion deal in November 2024. PE firm New Mountain Capital bought SmarterDx, previously backed by Transformation Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, and combined it with two other companies in May in a revenue-cycle rollup valued at $6 billion.
While most major healthcare RCM companies are owned by private equity firms or insurers, healthcare VC has seen numerous unicorns minted this year as investors pour money into AI startups tackling administrative tasks.
AI scribe startups Abridge and Ambience both crossed the $1 billion valuation mark in their individual fundraises this year, with Abridge’s valuation jumping to $5.3 billion after its second funding round of 2025. Both companies have said they plan to dig further into medical coding and billing as incumbents like medical records giant Epic encroach on AI scribing.
Medical AI search startup OpenEvidence hit a $6 billion valuation this week in its third funding round of the year. The first of those rounds, in February, had boosted its valuation to $1 billion.
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