Wally
Subscription-based dental clinics offering transparent, preventive care for a flat annual fee.
Website: https://www.carebywally.com/
Cover Block
Open sources
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Company | Wally |
| Tagline | Subscription-based dental clinics offering transparent, preventive care for a flat annual fee. |
| Headquarters | New York, NY [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Founded | 2020 [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Stage | Series A [Citybiz, October 2026] |
| Business model | Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Industry | Healthtech [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Technology type | Software (Non-AI) [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Geography | North America [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Growth profile | Venture Scale [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] |
| Founding team | Co-Founders (3+): Tyler Burnett, Stipe Latkovic, Chelsea Patel [Citybiz, October 2026] |
| Funding label | $10M+ [Forbes, October 2025]; [Citybiz, October 2026] |
| Total disclosed funding | ~$43,000,000 [Business Insider, Feb 2023]; [Forbes, October 2025]; [Citybiz, October 2026] |
Links
Open sources
- Website: https://www.carebywally.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wallyhealth
What an Investor Needs First
PUBLIC Wally is building a consumer dental-care model around a flat annual subscription, and it merits investor attention now because the company has paired a simple price point with visible fundraising and an expansion agenda that is unusually ambitious for a clinic-based business [Citybiz, October 2026] [Forbes, October 2025]. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in New York, Wally positions itself as an alternative to insurance-driven dentistry, with preventive care at the center of the pitch and a reported $249 per year membership for recurring access to cleanings and related services [Citybiz, October 2026] [carebywally.com]. The product story is straightforward: subscription-based dental clinics, with the company website listing unlimited cleanings, whitening, checkups, x-rays, and 3D scans, while third-party coverage consistently reinforces the preventive-care framing rather than a conventional fee-for-service treatment model [carebywally.com] [Citybiz, October 2026].
The founding team is one reason the company has drawn capital. Tyler Burnett is identified as co-founder and CEO, Stipe Latkovic as co-founder and engineering leader, and Chelsea Patel as co-founder with consumer-experience expertise, a mix that suggests Wally is trying to win on customer experience and clinic operations as much as on pricing [Citybiz, October 2026]. Public reporting also links Burnett to prior startups in digital media and fintech, though those prior exits are less firmly corroborated than his current role at Wally and should be treated with some caution [Amazon Music podcast listing, October 2025] [The Org].
On financing, the disclosed picture is substantial even if still incomplete. Business Insider reported a $3 million seed in February 2023, Forbes reported $18 million invested by October 2025 without fully specifying round structure, and Citybiz reported a $25 million Series A led by Maveron in October 2026, implying roughly $43 million in disclosed funding to date (estimated) by simple addition of reported rounds [Business Insider, Feb 2023] [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026]. The business model is direct-to-consumer membership rather than insurance reimbursement, and Forbes reported 25,000 members as of September 2025, which gives investors at least one external traction marker beyond company-owned channels [Forbes, October 2025].
The next 12 to 18 months will likely turn on whether Wally can translate a compact New York and New Jersey footprint into disciplined multi-site expansion without losing the economics or service consistency that make the subscription proposition work in the first place [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026]. Public sources point to aggressive growth targets, including plans for 100 new locations and later references to scaling from 15 to 100 locations, so the core diligence question is less about consumer appeal than about execution risk in a capital-intensive care-delivery model [Forbes, October 2025] [finsmes.com, October 2026].
Partially corroborated -- Relies on named-publisher reporting from Forbes, Business Insider, and Citybiz, with product detail supplemented by company-owned materials.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Series A |
| Business Model | Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) |
| Industry / Vertical | Healthtech |
| Technology Type | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (3+) |
| Funding | $10M+ (total disclosed ~$43,000,000) |
Inside the Company
PUBLIC
Wally is building a consumer dental-care model that starts with a simpler economic promise: a flat annual subscription instead of the usual mix of insurance billing and procedure-driven fees. The company was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in New York, New York [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024]. On its website, Wally presents itself as a subscription-based dental provider focused on preventive care, with a $249 annual membership built around unlimited cleanings and related diagnostics [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024].
The public record is still fairly thin, but the chronology is clear enough to sketch the business taking shape. Business Insider reported a $3 million seed round in February 2023, providing the first visible financing marker in the company’s buildout [Business Insider, Feb 2023]. By October 2025, Forbes reported that Wally had secured $18 million in investment and was operating in New York and New Jersey while planning a broader location expansion [Forbes, October 2025]. Citybiz then reported a $25 million Series A in October 2026 led by Maveron, with Wally described as a subscription-based dental clinic business founded by Tyler Burnett, Stipe Latkovic, and Chelsea Patel [Citybiz, October 2026].
The founding team appears intentionally split across company-building, product, and consumer experience. Citybiz identifies Tyler Burnett as co-founder and CEO, Stipe Latkovic as engineering co-founder, and Chelsea Patel as a co-founder with consumer-experience expertise [Citybiz, October 2026]. That mix fits the company’s public positioning: not only a clinical service, but a consumer health product that is trying to make routine dental care feel more predictable and easier to buy [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024].
Partially corroborated -- Confirmed in part by Crunchbase and the company website, with milestone chronology supplemented by Business Insider, Forbes, and Citybiz.
Under the Hood
Product and Service Model
MIXED Wally’s product is easier to understand as a care model than as a software story. Public reporting and the company’s website describe a subscription-based dental clinic business built around preventive care, with a $249 annual membership that covers "all-you-can-clean" access and positions the offering as an alternative to insurance-driven dentistry [Citybiz, October 2026] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024]. The public evidence supports the core proposition: Wally operates clinics, sells an annual membership, and centers the pitch on predictable pricing and prevention rather than episodic procedure billing [Citybiz, October 2026].
The feature set shown publicly is broader than cleanings alone, although the confidence level varies by source. The website states that members receive unlimited dental cleanings using Swiss-made Airflow technology, plus whitening, checkups, x-rays, and 3D scans, and it also advertises cavity reversal, periodontal care, and teeth straightening [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024]. A promotional landing page separately lists Curodont no-drill cavity treatment, periodontal therapy, clear aligners, retainers, and nightguards [carebywally.com, retrieved 2026]. Those claims are useful for understanding the consumer offer, but most of the treatment-level detail remains company-sourced rather than independently corroborated.
Technology Layer and Evidence Boundaries
MIXED The available record points to technology being used to structure the care experience, but it does not provide enough verified detail to map a defensible software stack. Wally’s LinkedIn page describes the company as combining technology and clinicians to deliver data-driven, proactive care, while Forbes characterized the model as an AI-powered solution for underinsured consumers [LinkedIn, retrieved 2024] [Forbes, October 2025]. That framing should be treated cautiously in this section because the sourced material does not verify what, specifically, is proprietary software, what is clinic workflow tooling, and what is third-party dental equipment or treatment protocol.
What is public and concrete is narrower. The company markets diagnostic and in-clinic technologies including Airflow cleanings, x-rays, 3D scans, and Curodont-based early cavity treatment, with a claim that 93% of early-stage cavities can be stopped without needles or drills, attributed on-site to peer-reviewed clinical studies [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024]. For investors, the operative point is that the customer experience appears to be differentiated first by packaging, pricing, and preventive-service design, while the extent of proprietary technology remains unproven in public materials [Citybiz, October 2026] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024].
Claim stands unchecked -- The section’s core business model is supported by independent press and the company website, but most treatment-level and technology-detail claims are company-only, with limited independent verification.
Market Research
PUBLIC
The market matters because Wally is selling into a large, structurally recurring category, oral health access, where consumer frustration with insurance-linked pricing appears to be creating room for subscription alternatives, according to the company’s public positioning and third-party coverage [Citybiz, October 2026] [Forbes, October 2025].
The evidence base for formal market sizing is thin in the materials reviewed, so any sizing discussion here has to stay narrow. No named third-party TAM, SAM, or SOM estimate for Wally’s exact category, subscription-based preventive dental clinics, appears in the captured sources. What is visible is the company’s own effort to define a consumer wedge around predictable annual pricing, and Forbes’ framing of the target user as underinsured consumers seeking lower-cost access to dental care [Forbes, October 2025] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024]. That is directionally useful, but it is not the same thing as a quantified market map.
Demand signals in the public record are more concrete than market sizing. Forbes reported 25,000 members as of September 2025 and said Wally planned to open 100 new locations within the following year, including 25 in the New York metropolitan area [Forbes, October 2025]. Citybiz later described Wally as operating subscription-based dental clinics focused on preventive care and priced the membership at $249 per year, while another 2026 source said the company planned to expand from 15 to 100 locations across new metropolitan hubs [Citybiz, October 2026] [FinSMEs, October 2026]. The clean read is that public demand is being tested through physical density, not just online acquisition.
The adjacent and substitute markets are easier to identify than the exact core market size. Wally competes, at minimum, with traditional fee-for-service dental offices, insurance-mediated dental networks, and lower-frequency retail dental consumption where patients defer visits until an acute issue appears. Its own website also points to ancillary revenue categories such as periodontal therapy, cavity treatment, whitening, retainers, nightguards, and clear aligners, which suggests overlap with orthodontics and elective oral-care spend, even if those services should not be assumed to be the primary demand driver [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2026]. For investors, that matters because the preventive subscription may function as both the product and the acquisition channel into broader dental wallet share.
Regulatory and macro forces cut both ways. Dental care remains a licensed, clinician-delivered service, so scaling is constrained by state practice rules, staffing availability, and the operational burden of opening physical clinics rather than pure software distribution. At the same time, the public narrative around Wally rests on two macro pressures that are easy to recognize in the sources: consumers want more transparent pricing, and at least some patients are looking for options outside conventional insurance pathways [Forbes, October 2025] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024]. The company’s case is strongest if those pressures persist and if preventive care can lower downstream treatment intensity, but the captured research does not independently quantify either effect.
| Cited market-relevant claim | Figure | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual membership price | $249/year | Consumer subscription entry point | [Citybiz, October 2026] |
| Members | 25,000 | As of September 2025 | [Forbes, October 2025] |
| Planned new locations | 100 | Within the year following September 2025 | [Forbes, October 2025] |
| Planned new NYC metro locations | 25 | Within the year following September 2025 | [Forbes, October 2025] |
| Expansion plan | 15 to 100 locations | Reported 2026 plan across new metro hubs | [FinSMEs, October 2026] |
The table does not size the total addressable market, but it does show the shape of the bet. Wally is pursuing a dense urban clinic rollout around a low-friction annual price point, which implies a consumer access thesis more than a pure technology-market thesis.
Partially corroborated -- This section relies primarily on Forbes and Citybiz, with supplemental company website detail and one additional expansion reference from FinSMEs. No independent third-party market sizing report was captured for Wally’s exact category.
Competition and Substitutes
MIXED
Wally is competing less against a single named startup peer than against the default structure of U.S. dental care, where insurance, episodic fee-for-service visits, and local practice branding still shape how most patients buy and receive care [Citybiz, October 2026] [Forbes, October 2025].
The competitive map is clearer by segment than by logo. In the incumbent lane, the real alternative is the traditional dental office, typically reimbursed through insurance or paid visit by visit, which Forbes and Citybiz both frame as the system Wally is trying to bypass with a $249 annual membership and a preventive model [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026]. In the challenger lane, the source set does not name direct venture-backed dental subscription rivals, so the public record here is thin. In the adjacent-substitute lane, consumers can still choose employer dental coverage, discount dental plans, or defer care altogether, all of which compete with Wally for the same household health budget even if they do not mirror its clinic model [Forbes, October 2025].
What looks differentiated today is the packaging, not yet a deeply evidenced structural moat. Wally has put a simple consumer offer in market, subscription-based clinics centered on preventive care at $249 per year, and Forbes reported 25,000 members as of September 2025, which suggests the message has found some resonance with underinsured or uninsured patients [Citybiz, October 2026] [Forbes, October 2025]. That said, the durability of this edge is still open to question: pricing clarity and a prevention-first pitch are replicable if regional dental groups or better-capitalized consumer health platforms decide the model is attractive, and the public sources do not yet establish proprietary data, payer contracts, exclusive supply advantages, or regulatory barriers that would make imitation especially hard [Forbes, October 2025] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024].
The company appears most exposed where physical healthcare businesses usually are: local density, clinic rollout, and consumer trust at the point of care. Traditional dental groups already own licensed provider networks, neighborhood awareness, and referral patterns, while insurers and established practices can bundle care into benefits that feel cheaper at the moment of purchase even when the economics are less transparent over time [Forbes, October 2025]. Wally also does not appear, from the public record available here, to control a proprietary employer distribution channel or a named health-system partnership, which means expansion still depends heavily on opening locations and converting patients market by market rather than plugging into a prebuilt member funnel [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026].
The most plausible 18-month scenario is that competition remains fragmented and execution matters more than head-to-head combat. Winner if X: Wally, if it can translate its reported New York and New Jersey traction into dense metropolitan expansion without eroding the customer experience that underpins a flat-fee membership model, especially given public plans to move from roughly 15 locations toward 100 over time [Forbes, October 2025] [finsmes.com, October 2026]. Loser if Y: the conventional independent dental office, if enough underinsured urban consumers decide that predictable pricing and frequent preventive visits are more compelling than episodic insurance-led care; but the reverse is also true, because Wally would be the more vulnerable party if clinic expansion runs ahead of demand or if incumbents copy the membership framing faster than Wally can build local scale [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026].
Opportunity
Upside case
PUBLIC The prize here is not a better neighborhood dentist brand, it is a chance to build the first scaled consumer dental platform organized around prevention and subscription economics rather than episodic insurance billing.
The headline opportunity is straightforward. If Wally can keep proving that a $249 annual membership can pull uninsured and underinsured consumers into routine dental care, then replicate that model from a New York and New Jersey base into a dense multi-city clinic network, it has a plausible path to become the default preventive dental brand for a large, price-sensitive consumer segment [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026]. That outcome is reachable, not merely aspirational, because the public record already shows three ingredients that usually have to be built in sequence: a simple consumer offer at a visible price point, evidence of member adoption at 25,000 as of September 2025, and expansion capital in the form of a $25 million Series A led by Maveron in October 2026 [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026].
The key distinction is economic design. Wally is not asking consumers to buy a one-off cosmetic treatment or to comparison-shop a high-ticket procedure. It is asking them to pre-commit to recurring preventive care, then broadening the relationship into diagnostics and additional services through its clinic footprint and membership relationship [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] [Citybiz, October 2026]. If that behavior holds outside its initial markets, the company could matter less as a dental-office operator and more as a consumer health platform with recurring revenue, owned demand, and lower dependence on traditional insurance reimbursement.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metro density winner | Wally turns New York into a repeatable clinic-density playbook, then ports it to other urban hubs with similar uninsured or underinsured populations | The October 2026 Series A supports expansion from 15 to 100 locations across new metropolitan hubs [finsmes.com, October 2026] | Forbes reported 25,000 members by September 2025 and plans to open 25 new locations in the New York metropolitan area within the following year, which suggests early demand density in one region [Forbes, October 2025] |
| Preventive care subscription brand | Wally becomes the best-known consumer brand for routine dental prevention, with cleanings as the low-friction entry point and higher-value care layered on after engagement | A simple annual membership priced at $249, with preventive positioning and no insurance requirement [Citybiz, October 2026] [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] | Public sources consistently describe a transparent, subscription-based clinic model focused on preventive care, which is easier to message and easier for consumers to budget than fee-for-service dentistry [Citybiz, October 2026] [Forbes, October 2025] |
| Multi-service wallet expansion | Wally uses the member relationship to expand into adjacent dental services such as periodontal therapy, aligners, retainers, and nightguards | The company already markets a broader service set beyond cleaning and checkups on its own site [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] | This is still company-asserted, but the model is plausible because the membership can lower customer acquisition friction for follow-on services delivered in the same clinical setting [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] |
The compounding mechanism, if it works, is a local density flywheel rather than a classic software network effect. A low annual price can attract first visits; more members can support more clinic openings; more convenient locations can improve retention and visit frequency; and each recurring preventive interaction creates more opportunities to sell adjacent services such as periodontal care or aligners that carry higher revenue per patient than the base subscription [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] [Forbes, October 2025]. Public evidence suggests the first parts of that flywheel may already be forming: Forbes reported 25,000 members by September 2025 and plans for 100 additional locations, while Citybiz described a nationwide expansion push after the Series A [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026].
There is also a brand advantage embedded in the offer if execution is consistent. Dental care is a category where many consumers defer visits because pricing is hard to predict and the experience is often unpleasant; Wally's pitch is the opposite, a flat annual fee and prevention-first positioning [carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] [Citybiz, October 2026]. That does not create a defensible moat by itself, but it can lower acquisition friction and improve word-of-mouth if members feel they understand both the cost and the care path before they book.
The size of the win is difficult to anchor precisely because the source set here does not include a confirmed category TAM or a direct public comparable. Even so, a reasonable upper-end framing is this: if Wally were to execute the "preventive care subscription brand" scenario at national scale, a buyer or late-stage market could value it more like a recurring-revenue consumer health platform than a small regional clinic chain, particularly if membership revenue proved durable and adjacent services expanded wallet share (scenario, not a forecast) [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026]. The public evidence is not strong enough to support a hard valuation range, but the combination of disclosed funding of about $43 million across seed, an undisclosed 2025 round, and a 2026 Series A, plus visible member growth claims, is enough to establish that the upside case is venture-scale rather than niche local-service scale [Business Insider, Feb 2023] [Forbes, October 2025] [Citybiz, October 2026].
Partially corroborated -- Supported primarily by Forbes, Citybiz, Business Insider, and the company website; the upside logic is grounded in public facts, but several compounding assumptions remain inferential and some service breadth claims are company-only.
Sources
Open sources
[Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] Wally Health - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wally-health
[Citybiz, October 2026] Wally Raises $25M to Fix America's Broken Dental Industry with a $249 'All-You-Can-Clean' Subscription | https://www.citybiz.co/article/915459/wally-raises-25m-to-fix-americas-broken-dental-industry-with-a-249-all-you-can-clean-subscription/
[Forbes, October 2025] A Dental Startup Offers An AI-Powered Solution To The Underinsured | https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2025/10/26/a-dental-startup-offers-an-ai-powered-solution-to-the-underinsured/
[carebywally.com, retrieved 2024] Wally - Unlimited Pain-Free Dental Care in NYC for $249/Year | No Insurance Needed | https://www.carebywally.com/
[Amazon Music podcast listing, October 2025] Reinventing Dentistry: Wally’s $249/Year Membership Model with CEO Tyler Burnett | https://music.amazon.com/es-cl/podcasts/65569d74-44d6-412a-b0dd-15fce5422bff/episodes/9391a8d7-06dc-4f4f-86f5-2f129dfe2340/opening-soon-reinventing-dentistry-wally%E2%80%99s-249-year-membership-model-with-ceo-tyler-burnett
[Business Insider, Feb 2023] Tyler Burnett turned a toothache into a VC-backed company. Here's an exclusive look at the pitch deck he used to raise $3 million for dental startup Wally Health. | https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-wally-health-dental-startup-bling-capital-tend-2023-2
[LinkedIn, retrieved 2024] Wally Health | LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/wallyhealth
[FinSMEs, October 2026] Wally Raises $25M in Series A Funding | https://finsmes.com/2026/10/wally-raises-25m-in-series-a-funding.html
[carebywally.com, retrieved 2026] NYC Plugged Offer | https://www.carebywally.com/promo/nycplugged
[The Org, retrieved 2026] Tyler Burnett | https://theorg.com/org/wally-health/org-chart/tyler-burnett
Articles about Wally
- Wally's $249 Dental Subscription Now Has 25,000 Members — The direct-to-consumer clinic model, backed by $43 million, aims to replace insurance-driven dentistry with preventive care.