Quick Take: Strive Health just announced a $550M capital raise ($300M equity, $250M debt) to scale its value‑based kidney care model and double down on AI‑powered operations.
That’s a strong signal for every CS leader building outcomes, not activities.
What Happened (Value‑Based Kidney Care & AI Funding)
Strive Health, a company focused on value‑based kidney care, raised a huge round to expand partnerships, grow multi‑specialty services, and invest in AI tools and analytics.
Their model is built around early intervention, preventive care, and tight integration with providers.
Reported results include lower costs and fewer hospitalizations alongside high patient satisfaction.
Why This Matters For Customer Success
This isn’t just healthcare news. It’s a blueprint for CS in any industry:
Outcomes > activity.
Funding flows to companies that prove measurable results (cost down, quality up). Your CS narrative should lead with outcome metrics, not meeting counts.
Early‑warning systems win.
Strive invests in predicting risk early. In B2B SaaS, that’s your churn‑risk radar: health scores, usage anomalies, and moments that signal value gaps.
Integrated care ≈ integrated journeys.
Their provider network mirrors how we should connect CS with Support, RevOps, and Product so customers don’t feel hand‑offs.
AI as a force multiplier.
Human‑led, AI‑assisted workflows scale high‑touch work without losing trust.
If you need a practical way to operationalize this, take a look at our lifecycle automation playbook—it shows how to replace spreadsheet‑driven processes with automated, signal‑based journeys in a weekend; see Why Customer Success Still Runs on Spreadsheets (and What to Steal from E‑Commerce) inside From Spreadsheets to Automation: CS Lifecycle Playbook.
Customer Success Action Playbook
1) Make risk visible.
Build a three‑tier risk model (Green / Watch / Critical) using 6–8 leading indicators (activation completion, weekly active users, executive usage, support backlog, value‑proof cadence). If you’re scaling this across segments, read Scaling Customer Success: The Ultimate Guide for a simple way to productize your motions.
2) Shift from reactive to proactive.
Create “care plans” for customers the same way Strive designs care pathways: outline the next best action, owner, deadline, and outcome metric. To position CS as a revenue driver in this conversation, see AI Just Gave CS a Seat at the Revenue Table.
3) Pilot AI safely.
Run 2–3 narrow pilots (e.g., renewal risk triage, QBR prep, executive summaries). Measure lift in cycle time, automation %, and quality. For a tested 30‑60‑90 approach, borrow the structure from Anthropic’s $13B Raise: What CS Leaders Should Do Now and adapt it to your stack.
4) Turn funding news into customer value.
When your vendors or partners raise, look for signals you can leverage: new integrations, better SLAs, or co‑marketing. For an example of how we translate funding into CS moves, check Ashby Raises $50M: What It Means for Customer Success.
5) Prepare your team.
If you’re hiring or upskilling, align interviews and onboarding to AI‑native workflows; our AI‑Powered CSM Interview Guide has practical prompts and a compliance checklist.
The Bigger Trend In Value‑Based Care & CS
We’re watching a shift from “high‑touch = expensive” to “high‑touch = efficient at scale” when AI handles the grunt work and humans handle judgment.
For more on low‑touch vs. high‑touch in an AI world, read The Future of Low‑Touch B2B SaaS and bring those ideas into your 2025 plan.
What This Means For Your QBRs
Add a Proactive Care slide that mirrors Strive’s approach: early signals, interventions, results.
Show a before/after story where automation freed time for strategic work.
Tie it all to retention, expansion, and cost‑to‑serve.
If you need messaging examples and templates, the Customer Success Engagement: Expert Insights article will help you keep outreach high‑quality while still scaling.
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—Hakan | Founder, The Customer Success Café Weekly Newsletter