• Friday was a court date for Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
• "Luigi Girls" lined up overnight for a seat in the lower Manhattan courtroom.
• "I've never heard his name mentioned once," a man hoping to scalp his spot on line said of Thompson.

It was well before sunset on Thursday when the first young woman took her place at the front of the line outside a federal courthouse in Manhattan.

"I would prefer not to talk to members of the press," she said Friday morning, giving an apologetic smile.

Luigi Mangione was in court Friday to enter a plea of not guilty in the ambush shooting murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The "Luigi Girls," a term used with fondness and sometimes derision by others in line, had waited upward of 12 hours to see Mangione in his jail khakis and ankle shackles.

As this macabre fandom kept their long vigil — eating takeout and grabbing naps on the pavement — the name Brian Thompson was never spoken, two frequent denizens of the line told Business Insider on Friday.

"It's all talk of 'Luigi,'" said John McIntosh, 43, of Manhattan, who said he waits in lines for money.

"I've never heard his name mentioned once," said McIntosh. He was referring to Thompson, the 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota who Mangione allegedly gunned down on a Midtown sidewalk in December.

This was McIntosh's third time waiting in line for a Mangione court date, he said Friday. The self-appointed line administrator kept a handwritten list of names and numbers for those in line. He himself was number 5, having staked his claim on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

"I'm hoping to sell my spot — I did very well with the Trump trial," he told Business Insider, referencing President Trump's hush money trial from last year.

Number one on the list had given her name as "C.M." Number two declined to give a name. Number three gave the name "R.J."

McIntosh wanted it to be clear that he is not one of them — he is no Luigi Girl. "I don't think the guy deserves any sympathy," he said of Mangione with a laugh.

"For the most part, people are more interested in caring about Luigi than about Brian," agreed Jarva Land, a sketch artist from Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood who made number 6 on the wait list.

Land said she had also waited in line — and then sketched — two of Mangione's prior appearances and had a good sense of "line culture."

Her sketches from the line document snippets of overheard conversations.

"I'm not doing any interviews today," she quoted one woman in line telling another in a sketch from the morning.

"Try dry shampoo," read another overheard snippet from Land's sketchbook. "Dry shampoo is my life saver."

At some point in the morning Land jotted down a conversation between the line waiters and a passing federal Marshall who asked, "How long you all been waiting here for?"

The line waiters jokingly responded, "Two days!" according to Land's sketch. "3 weeks! All our lives in a way!"

"Don't bust my chops in court," he joked back.

Land, too, is no Luigi Girl, she said. Though she admitted, "I love the Luigi Girls — even the mean ones."

She said there was more to them than people may think.

"I've heard there's this impression of these girls that are obsessed with Luigi and think he's just a heartthrob criminal or something," she said. "But that's the thinnest layer of it — I think the appeal is not that basic at all. It's ideas about this country and justice and systems of power."

As for herself, "I'm excited to be in the hearing and get to see Luigi — and sketch his eyebrows," she said. "Of course."

Most of the women at the front of the line obscured their faces with scarves or paper medical masks. By the time the courtroom opened, fewer than half of the 40 or so women in line would get inside.

Unlike on line, Thompson's name was mentioned multiple times in court, including when US District Court Margaret Garnett asked federal prosecutors if the healthcare executive's family members were being kept apprised of what is happening in the case.

They were, Assistant US Attorney Dominic Gentile assured the judge.

Mangione, 26, crisply responded "Not guilty" to the indictment charging him with stalking, murder, and the deadly use of a firearm.

His lead defense lawyer, Karen Agnifilo, told the judge that one of her private phone calls to Mangione, who remains jailed pending trial. had been inadvertently listened to by prosecutors. The judge asked prosecutors to inform her by next month of how that had happened.

The judge also reminded both sides of their obligation to limit their public statements on the case, so as not to "impede or affect Mr. Mangione's ability to get a fair trial and the court's ability to select a fair jury in this case."

The judge instructed prosecutors to pass that reminder on to Jay Clayton, the interim US Attorney for the Southern District of New York — which includes Manhattan — and to US Attorney General Pam Bondi "and any of her subordinates."

Mangione's next court date was scheduled for December 5, on which date a death-penalty trial date may be set.

• Nourish just raised $70 million in Series B funding led by JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners.
• Nourish connects patients with dietitians for virtual, insurance-covered nutritional care.
• The raise catapulted Nourish's valuation over $1 billion, per people familiar with the efforts.

The nutrition care market is exploding as weight-loss drugs like Ozempic bring rising costs to health insurers and patients alike.

Healthcare startup Nourish is at the forefront of that wave — and it just catapulted to unicorn status with a fresh infusion of cash.

Nourish has raised a $70 million Series B round led by JP Morgan's growth equity investment division, Business Insider learned exclusively.

The Series B included new investors Atomico, G Squared, and PineGrove Venture Partners, alongside returning backers Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Y Combinator, and BoxGroup.

Four people with knowledge of the round said the Series B put Nourish's valuation over $1 billion. The company declined to comment on its valuation.

Nourish connects patients with registered dietitians for virtual, insurance-covered nutritional care, a space that's seeing huge momentum as payers grapple with the costs and limitations of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.

CEO Aidan Dewar told BI that demand from health plans and patients has surged in the past year as weight-loss costs collide with the already escalating healthcare spend on chronic conditions — and meet an increasing consumer interest in health and wellness.

"All of these things have led to patients taking their health into their own hands, and patients and payers both looking for solutions like this," Dewar said.

Since its founding in 2021, Nourish has raised $115 million. But it didn't technically need to raise the JP Morgan-led Series B round, Dewar said — Nourish is now profitable, a rarity for a fast-growing digital health startup. Dewar said the startup hasn't touched any of its Series A capital, either.

Paris Heymann, co-managing partner at JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners, first invested in Nourish's Series A when he was a partner at Index Ventures. Index led Nourish's $35 million Series A in March 2024.

When Heymann left Index in October, Nourish was one of the top-performing companies in the firm's portfolio.

JP Morgan's growth equity arm has made 13 investments to date. Nourish is their first digital health investment.

"This is one of the fastest-growing companies we've seen at scale in a long time," Heymann said.

The perfect storm for a nutrition care boom

Nourish got its start in 2021, when childhood friends Dewar and COO Sam Perkins, along with Perkins' college friend CTO Stephanie Liu, set out to solve a problem they'd each faced firsthand. Dewar had struggled with migraines for years. Perkins dealt with irritable bowel syndrome. Traditional healthcare hadn't helped much — but nutrition care had.

"We realized it wasn't just things like migraines or GI issues that are downstream of what you eat, but some of the most prevalent, costly, and deadly conditions are downstream of nutrition," Dewar said.

Today, Nourish says it's built the largest nutrition care platform on the market, with more than 3,000 registered dietitians on staff.

The startup has landed dozens of partnerships with health plans, employers, health systems, and provider groups, treating hundreds of thousands of patients to date. About 95% of its patients receive that care entirely covered by insurance.

Nourish isn't the only startup capitalizing on the food-as-medicine boom. Fay Nutrition raised a $60 million Series B round in February led by Goldman Growth Equity, while Culina Health raised a $7.9 million Series A in December, led by Healthworx, the investment arm of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.

Dewar said Nourish sets itself apart, for one, by employing all of its nutritionists directly as W-2 employees rather than contracting them. Contracting providers is a common practice in telehealth, especially for startups like Nourish that offer care in all 50 states. "They're the stars of the show, and we want to treat them as such," Dewar said.

Then there are Nourish's heavy investments in AI. The startup built an in-house electronic medical record to integrate a number of AI tools for dietitians, including capabilities for automating chart notes, prepping clinicians for sessions, summarizing visits, and handling administrative workflows behind the scenes. On the patient side, the Nourish app offers AI-powered meal logging, personalized feedback based on wearable or lab data, and messaging with care teams, plus meal delivery options.

Those investments further help Nourish support patients on GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. Earlier this month, the company launched a GLP-1 companion program that provides nutrition support alongside any prescriptions, plus an "off-ramp" program to help patients taper off the drugs without losing progress.

The company says its GLP-1 patients lose 33% more weight, on average, than patients who take the drugs without its nutrition support, and they're less likely to stop the medication due to side effects. The programs aim to mitigate common complications like muscle loss and bone density decline, and support sustained weight or blood sugar outcomes post-medication.

Late-stage diabetes startups Virta Health and Omada Health have also started offering obesity care in the past year; both startups have published research suggesting their programs can help patients maintain their weight loss after they stop taking GLP-1 drugs.

But Nourish hasn't had much trouble competing with the rest of the startup landscape so far. Dewar said Nourish's growth is still accelerating, and it has no plans to slow down anytime soon.

He said the startup plans to use the Series B capital to keep hiring across its business, including by bringing on more registered dietitians; continue building out its AI capabilities; and notch more partnerships with health plans, employers, and provider groups.

• Doctronic just raised $5 million from Union Square Ventures for its healthcare AI agents.
• The startup's AI gives personalized advice on users' health questions and access to virtual doctors.
• It's competing in a hot space against startups like Roon and tech giants like OpenAI.

Doctronic is Matt Pavelle's twelfth startup. He's launched and led companies for renters' rewards, wine shopping, and luxury fashion. About two-thirds of them have been direct-to-consumer, while the rest have contracted with businesses to reach consumers.

Doctronic brings Pavelle's longtime consumer focus to a new domain: healthcare AI. And Doctronic has raised $5 million in seed funding, led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Tusk Ventures and startup accelerator HF0.

Google, and now AI models like ChatGPT, receive hundreds of millions, if not billions, of health-related questions from their users every day. Doctronic wants to use AI to improve that system by connecting patients with AI agents that can provide them with fast, anonymous, and personalized healthcare advice and connect them with a doctor when necessary.

Pavelle built Doctronic after seeing numerous friends and family members struggle to get timely and actionable responses from their healthcare providers about their own symptoms.

"If people who have some of the best health insurance possible in the country are having this much difficulty getting answers from their doctors, what happens to everybody else?" he said.

He and cofounder Adam Oskowitz launched New York-based Doctronic in September 2023 as a free service. Doctronic users share their age and sex, input their symptoms, and get four likely explanations and a plan of action, including a standardized note to share with their provider.

As of December, if those users want immediate care, they can book a video visit with a licensed medical professional through Doctronic. Patients can request a visit 24/7 in all 50 states and be connected with a provider, usually within 30 minutes, starting at $39.

Behind the scenes, the system is more than just an AI chatbot. It's a multi-agent framework: different AI "specialists" handle different areas of medicine, debate their findings, and pass their work to a human clinician for validation. The platform is LLM-agnostic — depending on the question, it might route to OpenAI, Anthropic, or multiple models at once and take the consensus.

"We're trying to build a seamless way for someone to come in and ask questions, or look for help navigating the medical system, and for us to figure out what they need and pass them to the right experts," Pavelle said.

Doctronic is competing with other healthcare startups like Roon, a Sequoia-backed company that raised $15 million in November to create a database of videos on health conditions, and tech giants like OpenAI, which has spawned numerous intelligence models used by doctors and patients alike, whether or not they're designed specifically for medical information.

Pavelle said Doctronic may eventually consider partnerships with gig economy marketplaces or employers to bring more users to its platform, but for now, Doctronic is staying firmly consumer-first. That's where most of the demand is coming from anyway — Pavelle said Doctronic gets most of its users from organic search, including from patients looking up their health questions on Google and finding Doctronic's site that way. The startup has also created some specialized landing pages, including for women's health and COVID-19.

"We see around 50,000 people a week — we've built something people really like, with lots of repeat users," Pavelle said. "We just want to keep improving to streamline the health system."

Here's the 11-slide pitch deck Doctronic used to raise its $5 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures.

• Drugmaker Eli Lilly announced promising Phase 3 study results for its new GLP-1 pill.
• Orforglipron is a drug similar to Ozempic but without the injection, making it more accessible.
• The pill, poised to revolutionize the weight loss world, may be up for FDA approval in late 2025.

A daily pill to rival Ozempic is one step closer to hitting the market.

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly saw its stock jump Thursday morning after announcing initial Phase 3 trial results on orforglipron, a highly anticipated medication for diabetes and weight loss.

The drug is in the same class of GLP-1 medications as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound — weekly injections that upended the weight-loss industry — but in pill form.

Lilly's head of diabetes and obesity Patrik Jonsson recently told Business Insider that orforglipron will likely unlock a much wider market, bringing the benefits of groundbreaking weight-loss drugs to people who can't, or don't want to, use injections.

"Most importantly, when you look at the global need, we expect that there are more than one billion people across the globe that are suffering from obesity," Jonsson said. "There is no way that we can meet those demands with injectable treatments today."

The race to make the perfect weight-loss pill

Lilly is racing to bring the first pill version of a GLP-1 for weight loss to market against competitors like Novo Nordisk and Pfizer, whose prospects have not lived up to expectations.

Novo Nordisk's Rybelsus, a daily pill with the same properties as Ozempic, was FDA-approved for diabetes in 2019.

However, its weight loss results didn't stack up to other GLP-1 drugs in studies, and it's not straightforward to take; users need to fast before and for 30 minutes after taking the pill.

Pfizer's daily pill, danuglipron, was scrapped after one study participant developed liver problems and recovered after they stopped taking the drug.

What we know about Eli Lilly's orforglipron

If all goes well for Lilly, orforglipron could be up for FDA approval for weight management by the end of 2025, and for type 2 diabetes treatment in 2026.

In the topline results released today, adults with diabetes who took orforglipron for 40 weeks had significantly better blood sugar control than those who took a placebo, according to a press release from Lilly.

They also lost up to 16 pounds (about 7.6% of their body weight) on average while taking the highest dose, and hadn't plateaued by the end of the study, suggesting even more weight loss could be possible.

The study — one of seven trials planned — found orforglipron is just as safe as other GLP-1 drugs, with the similar side effects like diarrhea and nausea.

The company intends to release more data later this year, Lilly's CEO David A. Ricks said in the press release.

The big question is: will it be cheaper than Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, or Zepbound?

While Eli Lilly has been tight-lipped about list price, analysts say there's a good chance orforglipron could cost less than the $900 monthly list price of current drugs, since a pill is easier to produce and distribute.

• Nvidia aims to integrate AI into every industry.
• Medical imaging firms could be early adopters of AI in healthcare, said Nvidia GM Kimberly Powell.
• Powell named two healthtech companies that could surge from AI.

Nvidia's vision of the future puts AI in every corner, crack, and crevice of the healthcare industry. But getting there may not be easy, perhaps, especially in the US.

The graphics processing unit, Nvidia's breakthrough chip that enables most of AI today, is a powerful tool. but it can't fix antiquated systems, regulations made in the paper era, and privacy concerns from both doctors and patients.

Still, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is famously drawn to what he calls "zero-billion-dollar markets," where he can build technology from scratch and educate the industry it fits into. In healthcare, that job falls to Nvidia General Manager for healthcare, Kimberly Powell.

Business Insider spoke to Powell about the realities of integrating AI into the sometimes intransigent healthcare industry. Powell has worked at Nvidia for 17 years, and healthcare, she has said, is one of the company's largest oppounities.

This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.

What's one area of the healthcare industry you spend a lot of time in?

One of our entry points into healthcare was medical imaging. When you go see your doctor, you're usually going in with some kind of symptom. And the first thing that happens is you go get imaged — they're going to look for something.

Radiology is a very step-by-step process: Set up the machine, capture the right image, and make sure the quality is good. Can I do some analysis before it gets to the radiologist? Should I circle this thing?

So you can add AI at a bunch of those stages to improve the whole workflow.

As I learn more about Nvidia's full-stack I notice some partners that have been in the niche supercomputer space and have grown immensely alongside Nvidia. Are there any companies in healthcare that you feel are way under the radar but will become incredibly important because of AI?

I think GE is one of them, which is why we partner with them. Diagnostic imaging is a $50 billion industry that only serves one-third of the population. If it were more autonomous, it could serve the entire population, perhaps, and be three times as large.

Some of these companies are 100 years old. They're used to selling hardware. Their big transformation over the last decade of working with them has been how to not just read the sensor data so that another human can read it, but enhance the sensor data to see more things. De-noise it, or enhance, it or add AI on top of it.

Another company most people don't know is IQVIA.

IQVIA is a clinical research company. For decades, it has conducted clinical trial research for the pharmaceutical industry.

That means they're working inside healthcare systems, as you're doing trials, you're collecting all this information about patients and their electronic health records, their labs, their imaging, what they ate for breakfast — that kind of stuff.

They've essentially created a data network because they serve 10s of 1000s of customers. So they have a data network that now all of a sudden can get an agentic AI — an intelligence layer — put on top of it to start offering services.

What they've done in the past is taken their data and they've sold it to Company A, Company B, and Company C, so that A, B, and C would take it in-house and try to build their own intelligence layer on top, recreating the wheel at every single one and doing it for different purposes.

They now have an opportunity to take a very pristine dataset and overlay an intelligence layer on it. IQVIA is like the SAP and ServiceNow of the healthcare industry.

A lot of the examples of AI in healthcare sound like they could change the costs. Imaging would have to be billed very differently if it was so ubiquitous in the way you're describing. Do you think about how the costs are going to shift? It feels like a pretty radical change.

It is a radical change, and it will take radical change across a very complicated economic system.

There's lots of conclusive evidence that if you catch, for example, some levels of cancer at stage one versus stage four, they're preventable and the cost to the system is drastically changed.

But we're still in a very 'treat the sick' rather than 'keep them healthy' mode. If we could have systems that can catch things earlier, then that should create a calculation that would make a lot of sense.

I'm wondering if you spend any time talking to ordinary people about AI and healthcare.

Yeah, I'm curious to know how people would interpret having a phone listen to their doctor because, on the one hand, they think about all these privacy concerns, but on the other hand, when I explain the benefits, they realize — 'Oh my God, that would change the experience forever for good.' It's just, sometimes it seems invasive.

But they don't know the 55 positive byproducts of AI being in the system. I pretty much live and breathe healthcare. So I'm talking about it all the time.

I was talking to my 9-year-old daughter, for example, and she was like, 'Why do you want a robot to do that?' And it's like, well, "Just like you get tired at night and your handwriting gets worse, you know, surgeons also get tired, and so if a robot could be there to help them." These are the conversations that I have. We're all patients, right?

• 23andMe filed for bankruptcy amid financial struggles and fallout after a data breach.
• Now, potential buyers and investors are weighing the value of its DNA database.
• One of the world's largest troves of genetic information, its sale is raising new privacy concerns.

Late last month, genetic testing giant 23andMe filed for bankruptcy.

The San Francisco-based company — cofounded in 2006 by former healthcare investor Anne Wojcicki — rose to fame for offering genetic testing services directly to customers.

When the company went public in 2021, it was valued at just over $6 billion. Now, it says it had debts of $2.3 billion, about $126 million in cash and cash equivalents, and needs additional liquidity.

The company's descent into financial uncertainty wasn't sudden.

23andMe had struggled with its business model, failing to turn a profit almost two decades after it began selling direct-to-consumer DNA test kits. Demand for its premiere product — a one-time test — began waning around 2019, and its effort to provide more consumer value through additional services wasn't enough to close the gap.

Then, in October 2023, hackers accessed the personal details of some users in a data breach that cost the company $30 million in a later settlement agreement. The breach also made potential new customers nervous about the security of their data and more resistant to purchasing kits.

The company's announcement that it was filing for bankruptcy and seeking buyers has now further raised concerns among consumers about the security of 23andMe's database, one of the largest consumer DNA databases in the world.

Cybersecurity experts have urged users to delete their data, pointing to a host of risks: Genetic data can be used to further discrimination, enable financial fraud, and develop biological weapons, they say.

23andMe has said it will continue operating until a buyer is found. A race to acquire the company — and its data — has begun.

Here's everything you need to know about the sale and what might happen to your DNA data.

What genetic data does 23andMe even collect?

23andMe gathers genetic data using saliva samples. Consumers receive a collection kit and submit about 2 milliliters of saliva. Each kit has a collection tube labeled with a 14-digit barcode.

"After the sample passes visual inspection, the barcode — which is the only identifying information shared with the laboratory — is scanned and the sample moves to DNA extraction," 23andMe spokesperson Ann Sommerlath told BI by email. "Once a sample is successfully genotyped, the laboratory sends the resulting data back to 23andMe along with the accompanying barcode, at which point we can begin interpreting your data."

Genotyping is the process identifying variations in someone's genetic code. These variations influence a person's physical traits, their development, and susceptibility to disease.

How does the company handle its genetic data?

Aside from sharing individual genetic reports with customers, if they opt-in, 23andMe says it uses anonymized genetic and self-reported information for research.

"When customers agree to participate in 23andMe Research via our consent document, they give 23andMe permission to share their de-identified, individual-level data with approved, qualified research collaborators outside of 23andMe," Sommerlath told BI. "De-identification (replacing personal information with a random ID) enables researchers to protect the identity of individuals."

23andMe shares some of the resulting research in its blog. In a piece from November 2024, for example, the company wrote that many of its users are descendants of Mayflower passengers.

23andMe was found to offer the "clearest privacy policy" in a review of 10 popular genetic testing services — including Ancestry, Toolbox Genomics, and Everlywell — that was conducted by the data privacy service Icogni.

Does a 23andMe buyer have to comply with its privacy policy?

Yes. And then no.

In order to make a qualified bid, "potential buyers must, among other requirements, agree to comply with 23andMe's consumer privacy policy and all applicable laws with respect to the treatment of customer data," the company said in a letter posted to its website on March 26.

Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall, a privacy service offered by Incogni, told Business Insider that the letter is just a guideline and leaves several questions unanswered.

"For how long is the letter good for? A day after purchase, a year?" Zayas asked. "What if a company like a data broker buys the company? It may change the definition of all the terms in the letter and even the privacy statement."

Benjamin Farrow, a partner at Anderson, Williams, & Farrow, said the new owner isn't legally bound to the existing privacy policy after purchase.

"There is no way a court will say the terms of service can never be changed," he told BI. "It's like buying a car. Once you own it, you can paint it, change the interior, do anything you want with it."

Thorin Klosowski, a privacy and security activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the security of a user's 23andMe data will depend on who purchases the biotech company.

"It doesn't take very many leaps of logic to think through some of the worst-case scenarios," Klosowski said. "Whether that is an insurance company or a company that would grant easier access for law enforcement."

Despite the bid requirements for 23andMe, Klosowski said, "We don't really know how that's going to play out."

"We don't know what would happen if an unscrupulous company didn't do that. We don't know how closely they would be monitored," he said.

Who wants to buy the company?

Wojcicki, for one.

She said she resigned as CEO of the company "so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder," in a post on X on March 24 announcing the bankruptcy.

A handful of other companies have also expressed interest.

Nucleus Genomics, founded by 25-year-old University of Pennsylvania dropout Kian Sadeghi, has explored the possibility of purchasing 23andMe. For Nucleus Genomics — a new player on the genetic testing market focused on whole genome testing — there's some value in the data and technology of a company with a 20-year history, Sadeghi said.

Crypto nonprofit Sei Foundation has also expressed interest in acquiring 23andMe. "This isn't just another bankruptcy. It's a digital land grab on one of history's most profoundly intimate data sets," the Sei Foundation said in an X post on March 31. "We're invested long-term in returning intellectual property (including your DNA) to the people. It's the American thing to do."

Pinnacle, an analytics company, is also apparently interested. In a LinkedIn post addressed to 23andMe's shareholders, Pinnacle cofounder and CEO Ryan Sitton wrote: "We will give you $100 million for 23andMe today."

How valuable is its genetic data?

There is no formula for quantifying the value of 23andMe's data, so potential buyers and informed speculators are making educated estimates.

Kanyi Maqubela, managing partner of venture capital firm Kindred Ventures, which has invested in several healthcare companies, told BI that genetic data is particularly valuable for pharmaceutical research and development because it often includes early disease markers.

Pharmaceutical companies are typically "very data hungry, always looking for new data pipelines, and always looking to collect it at scale," he said. So, "even partial genomic sequencing at the individual level is quite valuable."

It's even more valuable "if you've got metadata attached to it, so like demographic information, name," he said. By connecting people across geographies and disease levels, health companies can start drawing correlations across the data, which makes it all the more valuable, he added.

Incogni's Zayas said that 23andMe's data "is probably worth more than the service they were selling."

"If you look at the value of monetized information, a good cellphone can go for $50," he said. "Good buyer information, good credit card information, good demographic information, you can start looking at tens or even hundreds of dollars per individual."

23andMe has access to all of that and more, he said. "Just in research for insurance companies, that's got to be worth at least a few hundred dollars per individual."

The company says it has over 15 million customers, so by Zayas' calculations the data itself is worth several billions, at least.

Jessica Vitak, a professor at the University of Maryland's College of Information who researches data privacy, told BI that 23andMe's data is "fairly unique" and "extremely revealing."

"There's a tremendous trove of not just genetic data tied to those accounts, but the majority of people who use the service also completed surveys, so there are other data points that would interest various third parties," Vitak said. "Whether it's advertisers, health researchers, or people selling data to a whole range of entities."

Vitak said the depth of information is one reason 23andMe's data is so valuable.

"It's one thing if I decide to share information about myself, but genetic data isn't just about me," Vitak said. "It's about all my direct family members, too."

Sadeghi from Nucleus Genomics, however, said he is not making a bid because he thinks the data is valuable but instead because of another company 23andMe acquired.

23andMe only gathers "a small sliver of someone's DNA and the most critical genetic markers are actually completely absent from the data. They're just not there, and that's why it actually doesn't work for drug discovery. That's why it never worked as a clinical test either," he told BI. "The data is worth something, but is it worth anywhere near what people are positing today? Absolutely not."

Sadeghi said the real value of 23andMe is in Lemonaid Health — the telehealth company it acquired for $400 million in 2021 — as a way to connect with customers.

What can the new owners do with the company — and its genetic data?

Sadeghi said he sees the data as one component of a "real-time, consumer-centric, quantified health platform" he wants to build.

"There's no reason why you can't bring together someone's blood, genetics, drugs, urinary analysis, full body MRIs, wearables, all together in a single platform that can basically completely revolutionize disease prevention, disease diagnosis, and also disease treatment," he said.

Kindred's Maqubela said that "no one roots for a bankruptcy," but 23andMe's data is a "treasure trove" that he thinks could help grow the burgeoning field of multi-omics.

Multi-omics combines data from the genome (genes), proteome (proteins), transcriptome (RNA transcripts), epigenome (modifications to DNA), metabolome (molecules produced in metabolism), microbiome (fungi, bacteria, viruses), and more to create a more comprehensive picture of human biology.

"It's a very young field, mostly stuck right now in pharma R&D, and then in some bench and lab research, and so it hasn't yet broken into scaled provider and end patient uses, but it's going to soon," he said. 23andMe's data, he added, could accelerate the development of mult-omics.

Maqubela said the recent advances in AI also present new opportunities to use this data. "If you put it in pre-training for a big LLM, what comes out on the other end of that is actually very hard to know and could be very, very, very interesting," he said, referring to large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Vitak said potential buyers could use the data for research. "23andMe partnered with numerous researchers, so there could be buyers that would continue to expand access to that type of data to advance precision medicine or other types of research," she said.

Given the breadth, nature, and potential of 23andMe's data, Vitak and Klosowski said the sale is unprecedented.

"Any organization dealing with data as sensitive as our genetic material has a moral responsibility to take extra care," Vitak said.

Are there laws that exist to protect you?

Vitak and Klosowski said consumers need more federal protections regarding genetic data privacy.

Some states have implemented laws to help protect consumer data, including Montana, where, in 2023, state legislators passed the Genetic Information Privacy Act, which is focused on protecting consumers' genetic data. California has similar protections for genetic data with direct-to-consumer testing companies.

The federal government, meanwhile, enforces the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which bars employers and health insurers from discriminating against individuals based on genetic information.

However, Vitak said the United States also needs something like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which enforces broader protections for data processing.

"The data breach and the sale are further making the case for why we need stronger data protection for consumers," Vitak.

• House Republicans moved forward on President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration, energy, and tax cut plan.
• Their plan could lead to significant cuts to Medicaid.
• GOP lawmakers will now have to flesh out their proposal, including potential cuts to programs.

House Republicans on Thursday voted to pass a GOP-budget plan that could lead to massive cuts to Medicaid after President Donald Trump leaned on a handful of conservative holdouts.

The final vote was 216 to 214. The budget resolution, which requires Senate committees to identify spending cuts totaling a low floor of $4 billion, includes controversial language that calls for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion in programs it oversees over the next decade. Speaking alongside Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans want to find at least $1.5 trillion in cuts. Johnson pulled a vote on the legislation Wednesday evening amid uncertainty that it would pass.

Before Thursday's vote, Johnson held a joint news conference with Thune. The pair sought to reassure House conservatives that the GOP will cut significant spending in addition to tax cuts.

The budget plan is the next step in unlocking the special fast-track power, known as reconciliation, that Republicans are using to ram Trump's "big, beautiful bill" through Congress. GOP lawmakers will now have to fill in the details of their sweeping proposal, including whether they will cut Medicaid and if so by how much.

Johnson and GOP leaders have repeatedly stressed that their bill does not explicitly cut Medicaid, a healthcare program for millions of disabled and low-income Americans. However, Medicaid will likely get cut by or near $880 billion over a decade, as Medicaid and Medicare, which Trump has pledged not to cut, comprise most of the committee's budget. The federal government picks up the bulk of the tab for Medicaid spending. As of 2023, the federal share was about 72%.

Three Senate Republicans, Sens. Josh Hawley, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, joined Democrats in an unsuccessful effort to strip that language out of the plan before it passed their chamber.

Republicans will likely have no choice but to slash the program to reach the $880 billion in required cuts, much of which could hit Medicaid expansion. Failing to meet the spending target would risk the sweeping policy bill losing its special procedure power. If that were to happen, Republicans wouldn't be able to ram their bill through the narrowly controlled Senate where Democrats can use the filibuster to stop most other legislation.

Some Republicans have expressed uneasiness about potential Medicaid cuts. Hawley, a Trump ally, represents Missouri, where 20.3% of residents are Medicaid recipients. He previously told reporters that it was "a big concern" if the legislation would slash the healthcare program. Hawley said Trump shared his views. The president previously said he would "love and cherish" Medicaid.

About 23.3% of all Americans, or over 79 million, receive either Medicaid or the related Children's Health Insurance Program, a Business Insider analysis showed using July 2024 population estimates and October 2024 Medicaid enrollment data. States including New Mexico, California, and New York have over a third of residents on Medicaid, the analysis found. Nearly all states have at least 10% of residents on Medicaid or CHIP.

Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Dakota all mandate in their state constitutions that they participate in Medicaid expansion.

If Medicaid does get cut, some Republican leaders have suggested adopting per-capita Medicaid caps to limit how much federal funding an enrollee could receive, which could save as much as $900 billion.

Some have mulled adding Medicaid work requirements, while others have proposed cutting Federal Medical Assistance Percentages, the federal government's Medicaid spending share per state. Some critics have further argued that recipients can secure insurance from elsewhere, including from work.

• A Beckley Psytech investor is looking to invest up to an extra $20 million in the biotech startup.
• Noetic Fund wants to back Beckley Psytech at a $200 million valuation, per an email seen by BI.
• The startup is developing a psychedelic-based nasal spray to treat depression.

Beckley Psytech's investors are trying to drum up enthusiasm to put fresh funding into the biotech startup, Business Insider has learned, as Beckley advances through clinical trials for its new psychedelic-based depression drug.

Noetic Fund, a venture firm that backs healthcare and biotech companies and a previous investor in Beckley Psytech, is seeking participants for an investment vehicle to put up to $20 million into Beckley Psytech, according to an email Noetic sent to prospective investors seen by Business Insider.

The raise would value the company at $200 million before the additional funding, giving Beckley Psytech a post-money valuation of up to $220 million after the fundraise, per the email.

The efforts are ongoing and terms of the deal could be subject to change. Noetic Fund didn't respond to requests for comment.

"We are regularly in discussions with both existing shareholders and potential new investors to ensure the company remains well-capitalized. However, there is currently no term sheet in place with any partner and no active transaction is underway," A Beckley Psytech spokesperson said in an email to BI.

Beckley Psytech is developing a drug in the form of a short-duration intranasal spray to target treatment-resistant depression and alcohol use disorder.

The Oxford, United Kingdom-based startup has raised $143 million to date, according to PitchBook. It last announced $50 million in funding in January 2024 from Atai Life Sciences, a German biotech that went public in 2021.

Beckley is one of many companies jumping on the promise of psychedelic compounds for treating depression, alongside multiple public rivals such as GH Research and Compass Pathways.

Those companies are following in the footsteps of Johnson & Johnson, which got approval for its own nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression, Spravato, in 2019. The spray, derived from the dissociative drug ketamine, was the first drug approved to treat depression in more than 35 years.

Still, the Food and Drug Administration has never approved a drug based on classic psychedelics like the hallucinogen psilocybin. (Ketamine and its derivatives are not traditionally considered psychedelics, though they have many psychedelic properties.)

Noetic told prospective investors in its email that Beckley Psytech hopes to go public within 12 months of publishing its phase 2b clinical trial data, or otherwise pursue a strategic M&A deal.

Beckley's beginnings

Beckley Psytech spun out of the Beckley Foundation, a nonprofit set up in the late 1990s to support studies into psychoactive compounds. Beckley Psytech's cofounders Amanda Feilding, founder and director of the Beckley Foundation, and her son CEO Cosmo Feilding Mellen, who spent 10 years at the nonprofit as an advisor and executive director, launched the startup in 2019 to independently develop psychedelic-based drugs for neuropsychiatric disorders.

Beckley Psytech's clinical protocol is led by chief science and medical officer Dr. Rob Conley, who was formerly the chief scientific officer of neuroscience at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

The startup's first drug is based on the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT, a compound found in the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad, as well as several plant species.

The company is also developing a second program to treat major depression disorder using a synthetic formulation of psilocin, the psychedelic compound in psilocybin mushrooms.

Beckley appears to be a bit behind on producing the trial data for its first drug. The startup said in March that it had completed enrolling patients for phase 2b of its trial and expected to share topline results by mid-2025.

When Atai Life Sciences announced its investment in Beckley Psytech in January 2024, the company said it expected to see published phase 2b data by the second half of 2024.

Atai Life Sciences is Beckley Psytech's largest shareholder, according to the documents seen by BI.

• Hinge Health is considering delaying its IPO plans amid a plunging stock market.
• The physical therapy startup still hopes its "recession-proof" model will draw investor attention.
• Some tech companies, including Klarna and StubHub, have reportedly already delayed their IPO plans.

The physical therapy startup Hinge Health is considering delaying its IPO as the public markets plunge in response to President Donald Trump's tariff plans, Business Insider has learned.

But the startup hopes to forge ahead with its spring initial public offering timeline, as a provider of critical health services.

In March, Hinge Health filed its S-1 form to go public and hoped to start pitching investors toward the end of April, a person familiar with the efforts said.

After Trump announced sweeping retaliatory tariffs on Wednesday— sending the public markets into a frenzy — Hinge Health could be forced to reassess those plans.

Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs are set to range from 10% to 50% on imported goods from about 90 countries, the president said Wednesday. Since that announcement, the S&P 500 has plunged more than 9%.

Hinge Health had hoped to go public sometime in April or May, keeping its plans flexible with the market volatility in mind, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak with the press.

This person said Hinge would still seek to go public unless it couldn't draw investors' attention away from the volatility in their portfolios. The startup has plenty of cash on its balance sheet and doesn't need the IPO proceeds to finance the business, they said.

A representative for Hinge Health declined to comment.

It appears Hinge isn't the only startup considering delaying its IPO plans. The payments platform Klarna and the online ticket marketplace StubHub both put their plans on ice following the tariffs announcement, The Wall Street Journal said. The outlet added that Klarna and StubHub planned to pitch public investors on their respective IPOs next week but decided to postpone their road shows after the past two days of market volatility.

Klarna and StubHub both declined to comment to BI.

Healthcare's IPO drought

Hinge Health would be the first healthcare delivery startup to go public in nearly three years. The IPO market has been decidedly closed for digital health startups since 2021, and the healthcare companies from that year's IPOs haven't performed well on the public markets.

The San Francisco company launched in 2014 to provide virtual care for joint and muscle pain. It's raised more than $1 billion from venture capitalists, including Tiger Global, Coatue, Insight Partners, and Atomico, including a $400 million Series E in October 2021 at a $6.2 billion valuation.

The company's public S-1 filing in March showed a strong financial profile for a healthcare startup. It reported $390 million in revenue in 2024, up 33% from the previous year's revenue, and a 77% gross margin. It's not profitable but getting close, recording $45 million of free cash flow in 2024 but a net loss of $11.9 million for the full year.

The person familiar with Hinge Health's IPO plans said the startup's business is somewhat recession-proof as a healthcare benefits provider that can help drive cost savings for employers. Hinge Health also doesn't charge copays for its services, which the person said makes its platform more compelling when the cost of living surges.

Hinge Health isn't the only healthcare startup hoping for a public market debut. Omada Health confidentially filed its S-1 this past summer, BI reported in October. Hinge Health's rival Sword Health has also expressed interest in going public when the IPO window reopens for healthcare companies.

Jyoti Mann contributed to this report.

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• Over a third of Americans, about 91 million people, can't afford quality medical care, per a new survey.
• The survey results come as healthcare costs are on the rise for many Americans.
• Disparities in access to healthcare are rising for low-income, Black, and Hispanic Americans.

Over a third of Americans can't afford quality medical care.

That figure represents about 91 million people, per a survey published on April 2 and conducted by Gallup and West Health, and is a record-high number for the four-year-old survey.

The survey results come as healthcare costs rise, and some people have experienced lapses in health insurance coverage due to policy changes. The study results indicate that the affluent are experiencing little to no change in their access or ability to afford to healthcare, while the low-income Americans are shut out. Dan Witters, one of the survey's authors and researchers, said this is likely due in part to inflation.

"If you're making under $25,000 a year, that absolutely can be the difference between whether you can spend the money on it or not," said Witters, who is also the research director of Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, when speaking about the ability to afford healthcare.

Researchers split survey respondents into three categories — cost secure, cost insecure, and cost desperate — based on their ability to access and pay for medicine and care. They found that the percentage of people unable to afford healthcare expenses has been rising fastest among low-income, Black, and Hispanic Americans.

Meanwhile, 25% of households making less than $24,000 a year reported being unable to afford and access essential medicine and care in 2024, up from 14% in 2021.

While white adults saw no change in the same time period, Hispanic and Black adults experienced an eight and five percentage point decline in cost security, respectively.

Witters said the costs are highest for those living along the Bible Belt in the West and East South Central regions. He added that fewer people in those regions are insured and have greater health complications, like obesity and diabetes.

"People that are sickest in this country, that have the most chronic conditions, that require the most prescription drugs, are also the ones that are least likely to be able to afford and access our healthcare system," Witters said.

Witters added that a third of the people deemed cost desperate in the survey are cutting back on utilities or food to pay for medical costs.

Others take on debt: West Health and Gallup recently reported that in 2024, 12% of Americans borrowed money to pay for healthcare, which amounted to about $74 billion borrowed.

Additionally, low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid for health insurance are bracing for potentially fewer benefits. In February, House Republicans passed a proposed budget that aims to cut $880 billion in funding for Medicaid over the next 10 years.

The Economic Policy Institute found that these cuts to Medicaid could disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic Americans who are more likely to rely on Medicaid for healthcare coverage.

Do you have a story to share about being unable to afford your medical costs? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected].

• Palantir launched its healthcare business four years ago, with two 25-year-olds at the helm.
• The $193 billion data giant builds AI tools for health systems like Mount Sinai and HCA Healthcare.
• Co-lead Jeremy David said healthcare now makes up 15% of Palantir's commercial revenue.

Jeremy David and Drew Goldstein had no healthcare experience when, in their mid-twenties, they set out to use Palantir's software platform to disrupt hospital operations.

Now, they're working with top health systems like Mount Sinai and HCA Healthcare, competing with dozens of healthcare startups in the AI race.

The $193 billion data giant Palantir is best known for its AI-powered military surveillance software, which it sells to customers like the US Department of Defense, and data analysis tools for finance, which it sells to corporate clients like Morgan Stanley.

But Palantir's healthcare business, which launched around four years ago, is picking up steam. David said the healthcare segment now accounts for about 15% of Palantir's commercial revenue, which reached $702 million in 2024. Palantir said it's helped hospitals save millions of dollars with its tech for healthcare revenue optimization and workforce management and improved patient outcomes with tools for everything from sepsis detection to hospital-at-home care.

David and Goldstein attribute the business's rapid growth to a combination of its robust partnerships — Palantir has signed numerous multiyear contracts with health systems such as Cleveland Clinic, Tampa General, and Nebraska Medicine — as well as its focus on AI at a time when, as Goldstein put it, "folks are worried about getting left behind, and starting to question if the partnerships they already had are actually creating any value."

Palantir's unfair advantage in healthcare is obvious: the company has a depth of resources and financial backing at its fingertips rarely afforded to healthcare startups, plus the software capabilities to build personalized AI-powered solutions for health systems.

Palantir isn't entirely pushing out other healthcare companies, however. The data company launched a partnership in March with R1 RCM, the revenue cycle management company acquired by TowerBrook and CD&R in a $8.9 billion take-private deal in August. Palantir also launched a program called HealthStart last year to equip healthcare startups with tools like Palantir's developer platform.

"It's very hard to get access to problems in healthcare because of the monopolistic electronic medical records players and the information security challenges of working with patient health information," Goldstein said. "If we could make it easier for startup teams all over the place to get access to those problems and solve them faster, and democratize that, I think that's valuable for the whole market."

How Palantir is trying to transform healthcare

Palantir kicked off its healthcare push in 2021, working with Cleveland Clinic and Tampa General, when Goldstein and David were both 25 years old.

They were given a tall task: promise these giant healthcare institutions that, in two months, they would deploy Palantir's software customized for healthcare to drive value.

"When we've been cast as the people here to fix the hospital, but we show up as two 25-year-olds, it's a hilarious position to be put in because they hate you by default," David said.

Goldstein and David, now 29 years old, set out to build software for health systems in three buckets: revenue cycle management, staffing and scheduling, and patient capacity management.

For revenue cycle management, Goldstein and David set out to automate the whole process of how hospitals capture and manage revenue — from coding to submitting claims to handling insurance denials. They decided to partner with R1 RCM because its business can help manage the whole RCM process on top of Palantir's platform. In contrast, many startups are only able to tackle a subset of revenue cycle tasks, Goldstein said.

On the workforce management side, Palantir began working with Nashville-based HCA Healthcare in 2023 to create medical provider schedules with AI, taking into consideration clinicians' preferences and other staffing constraints. Palantir says it's now deployed its customized workforce management software across about 75 of the health system's hospitals for more than 40,000 nurses.

While Palantir's 120-person strong healthcare team has worked exclusively with hospitals to date, David said he and Goldstein have been having more conversations about where Palantir could plug into other parts of the healthcare system, like by helping to manage interactions between payers and providers.

"If you can automate and improve the interface between the payer and provider, that market is hundreds of billions of dollars, and no one's doing a good job at it," David said.

Palantir's entry into healthcare hasn't come without criticism. In 2023, the company won a roughly $415 million seven-year contract with the National Health Service in the United Kingdom to create a unified patient data platform. The contract was met with a public outcry over concerns that the data would be mishandled, in part because of Palantir's work with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which human rights groups argued was used to facilitate family separations and deportations.

Goldstein clarified that a separate team inside Palantir works with the NHS, and noted that he hasn't encountered the same degree of data privacy concerns in the US.

In response to mention of the criticisms, he pointed to Palantir CEO Alex Karp's long history of outspoken support of American innovation — and outspoken criticism of Europe's pace of tech development.

"You can find about a million videos of our CEO talking about why America is a hundred times better of a place to solve problems than Europe right now," Goldstein said.

• The US is seeking to execute Luigi Mangione over the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
• The government has steep odds for success, given the hesitancy of death penalty juries in New York.
• In 2023, a jury couldn't agree on Sayfullo Saipov, who killed eight people in a truck attack.

On Halloween in 2017, an avowed Islamist extremist named Sayfullo Saipov drove a rental truck across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, then careened south along a popular west-side bike path, sending cyclists flying. Eight people died.

If Saipov's jury failed to send him to death row, there's no way another jury — sitting, like Saipov's, in a federal courtroom in Manhattan — will vote to end the life of Luigi Mangione, former federal prosecutors told Business Insider.

"Honestly I don't believe any Manhattan jury is going to decide to impose the death penalty," said Ephraim Savitt, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.

Mangione does not fit the profile of a death penalty eligible criminal, he said, speaking Tuesday after Attorney General Pam Bondi said the government would seek the ultimate penalty in what she called the "cold-blooded assassination" of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

"Maybe in Texas," Savitt said. "But it's not a mass shooting. It's not an act of terrorism. It's a horrible crime, of course. But as serious as it is, it does not fit in the rubric of someone who should be put to death."

He added, "Mangione is not going to be sentenced to death."

Mangione is facing charges in three jurisdictions.

The least serious are the weapons and forgery charges out of Pennsylvania, where the 26-year-old software developer from Maryland was arrested after a five-day manhunt.

He is also facing state-level charges of murder as an act of terror out of Manhattan, where District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said Mangione will be tried first.

Mangione's federal jury would be chosen from the Southern District of New York, which includes people from Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester County, and five other counties on the southern end of the state.

In federal court, now that this is an official death penalty case, a single trial jury would preside over a phase to determine Mangione's guilt and then another to determine how he should be punished.

There's a strategy in seeking the death penalty

The jury would consist only of people who are willing to impose a death penalty, tilting it in the government's favor, Savitt said.

"It improves your odds of a conviction, absolutely," said Savitt, of the Ephraim Savitt Law Firm in Manhattan.

That's one of two key strategic benefits to seeking the death penalty, former prosecutors said, even if an ultimate verdict of death may be unlikely.

Another strategic benefit to seeking the death penalty is it gives the government "great leverage" in plea negotiations, said another former federal prosecutor, Michael Bachner.

"If you're the defense lawyer, you may want to work it out as a package — he pleads to both cases and there's no death penalty," said Bachner, now in private practice at Bachner & Associates.

In Mangione's favor is that a death penalty verdict must be unanimous. The defense needs to convince only one juror that Mangione does not deserve the death penalty, Bachner and Saviott noted.

Both former prosecutors said, strategy aside, the real benefit to seeking the death penalty was political.

The top count against Mangione — murder through the use of a firearm in the commission of crimes of violence — is death penalty eligible, and President Donald Trump has promised to seek executions in all eligible cases.

"I think seeking the death penalty in this case is a reaction to Donald Trump's previous statements," Bachner said.

Should the case go to trial, and a death penalty phase be necessary, much of the evidence would center on Mangione's mental health, Bachner said.

"Just in the evidence that's in the papers, his behavior, his writings, his break with his parents, and although there was planning, he certainly is not all there," Bachner said.

"And juries are not going to convict a 26-year-old kid who's had no violence in the past, and may have mental issues, and who comes from a good family," he added.

"I don't think there's any jury anywhere that would unanimously impose the death penalty on Luigi Mangione," he said.

A split jury, no matter how small the split, would mean that Mangione would face life in prison without parole.

• Attorney General Pamela Bondi wants the death penalty for Luigi Mangione.
• His defense attorney said the decision supports the "murderous healthcare industry."
• While New York state doesn't allow the death penalty, it can still be sought by federal prosecutors.

An attorney for Luigi Mangione accused the Justice Department of backing a "murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people."

The comment came after Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the accused killer.

"While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi," defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement. "By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people."

Earlier on Tuesday, Bondi announced that she wanted the government to execute Mangione, who is accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

"Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America," Bondi said. "After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again."

The former Ivy League student is facing two parallel criminal cases in Manhattan, one from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and one from federal prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York.

New York has eliminated the death penalty for cases brought by state prosecutors, such as the Manhattan District Attorney. Federal prosecutors in the Justice Department can still seek death as a punishment.

Friedman Agnifilo's statement said the decision to "murder" Mangione was "political and goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent."

"This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship," she said. "Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man's life."

Law enforcement officials arrested Mangione in Pennsylvania in December, following a manhunt. They say he shot and killed Thompson on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk as he arrived at a conference.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. While Mangione is in federal custody — housed in the same jail as Sean "Diddy" Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried — the Manhattan District Attorney's case has been moving more swiftly to trial. Last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys sparred over whether he should be permitted to have a laptop in jail as he prepares his defense.

A federal judge had already assigned a lawyer specializing in capital punishment, Avi Moskowitz, to Mangione's defense team in February. A representative for Mangione's legal team didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump has prioritized the death penalty in the federal criminal justice system. Bondi, in her first day in office, issued a memorandum lifting a Biden-era moratorium on executions.

• The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson won a small victory Thursday.
• A NY state judge said he would not oppose the suspect, Luigi Mangione, having a laptop in jail.
• The DA fought laptop access after heart-shaped notes were nearly passed to him in a pair of socks.

UnitedHealthcare murder suspect Luigi Mangione still can't have two heart-shaped notes that were nearly smuggled to him inside a pair of argyle socks — but he's well on his way to getting a hotly debated laptop for his federal jail cell.

On Thursday, a state judge said he would not oppose Mangione having a secure laptop he could use to review thousands of hours of video and photo evidence, something federal prison officials are also not opposing.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro ruled in favor of Mangione receiving such a laptop in a written decision that followed a closed-door conference held Thursday morning without the presence of Mangione, the media, or a stenographer.

"As stated at the conference, the court has no objection to the defendant being provided with a laptop computer to view discovery if the federal authorities permit it," Carro wrote, without divulging his reasoning.

State prosecutors had fought hard to keep defense lawyers from giving Mangione a laptop as he awaits trial in a federal jail in Brooklyn, even if the device is not connected to the internet.

Prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that a laptop would be loaded with images of potential civilian witnesses from the manhunt.

It would pose a security risk, given how out-of-control his fans can be, said lead state prosecutor Joel Seidemann, citing ongoing "concern for the safety of individuals who cooperate" with investigators.

"Defendant's conduct has directly led to several instances of harassment, backlash, and death threats against both individuals who have cooperated with the investigation as well as prospective witnesses, including employees of the Altoona McDonald's where defendant was arrested," Seidemann wrote on Wednesday.

Also threatened have been "members of the Altoona Police Department who simply did their duty, and healthcare professionals both associated with UnitedHealthcare and others in the industry generally," Seidemann added, laying blame on "those who sympathize with Defendant."

Mangione is charged in parallel state and federal indictments with the December ambush-shooting murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The prosecutor alleged that unnamed sympathizers struck yet again on Mangione's behalf on February 21, his most recent state court date.

On the morning before the court date, as Mangione was being allowed to change out of jail garb and into civilian clothes before facing Carro, state court officers intercepted two pink, heart-shaped notes while searching a bag of clothing that had been given to him by members of the defense team, he said.

"Among the items of clothing was a new pair of argyle socks wrapped around cardboard," Seidemann wrote. The two notes were "secreted in the cardboard."

One note was signed r/FreeLuigi, in an apparent reference to a 37,000-member Reddit community.

It read "Luigi, We are all rooting for you! Know there are thousands of people wishing you luck," defense attorneys revealed in a filing Wednesday night. The other note was addressed to "Joan," who was thanked for her help in navigating the "online discourse."

Lead defense lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said in the filing that "in the haste of the situation, the defense inadvertently did not see that there were two heart-shaped notes contained within the socks."

She added, "If this "incident" is the basis for the danger the prosecution is referencing, we submit that this does not meet the standard to allow them to deny our reasonable requests."

Mangione is next due in federal court on April 18, and in state court on June 26.