Apollo backs drill-free dental unicorn vVardis at $1B valuation
What's the deal? Apollo Global ManagementDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has invested in Swiss dental firm vVardis at a $1 billion valuation. The company, co-founded and led by dentist sisters Haley and Goly Abivardi, develops Curodont — a needle- and drill-free liquid treatment that enables teeth to repair early-stage cavities from within. The founders retain roughly 70% of the company.
Why now? Investor interest has surged since JPMorganDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → chief executive Jamie DimonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → publicly praised vVardis at a San Francisco conference early last year. The company's products are now used in about 20% of US dental offices, and it is expanding rapidly in Europe and the Middle East. Apollo's backing will fund further growth in both markets.
What could go wrong? The $1 billion valuation rests heavily on a single flagship product and on continued adoption by dental practices. Scaling a novel clinical approach — one that asks dentists to rethink decades of surgical instinct — is a slow, relationship-driven process.
The signal: Untreated cavities are the world's most common health condition, per the World Health Organization, yet dentistry's core toolkit has barely changed in generations. vVardis is betting that the industry is ready to shift from drilling to regeneration — and Apollo, one of the world's largest alternative asset managers, is backing that thesis at unicorn scale. The deal adds vVardis to a small club of privately held billion-dollar healthcare firms in Europe.
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