Ethos Technologies, a San Francisco-based provider of software for selling life insurance, debuted on the Nasdaq on Thursday. As one of the first major tech IPOs of the year, the insurtech platform is being watched closely as a bellwether for the 2026 listing cycle.

The company and the selling shareholders raised approximately $200 million in the offering, selling 10.5 million shares at $19 each under the ticker symbol “LIFE” — one of the more on-the-nose options in recent memory. The name fits. Ethos runs a three-party platform where consumers buy policies online within 10 minutes without a medical exam. It says more than 10,000 independent agents use its software to sell policies and that carriers such as Legal & General America and John Hancock rely on it for underwriting and administrative services. Ethos itself is not an insurer – it is a licensed agency that earns commissions on sales.

Although the company’s stock closed on the first day as a public company at $16.85, 11% below the IPO price of $19, Ethos co-founders Peter Colis and Lingke Wang still have a lot to celebrate, having grown the 10-year-old business to the scale of the public market.

“When we launched (the business), there were like eight or nine other life insurtech startups that were very similar to Ethos, that had similar Series A funding,” Colis told TechCrunch. “Over time, most startups pivot, get sub-scale, stay sub-scale or go out of business.”

For example, Policygenius, which has been raised $250 million from investors, including KKR and Norwest Venture Partners, is obtained by PE-backed Zinnia in 2023. Meanwhile, Health IQ, a startup that has raised more than $200 million from prominent VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, filed for bankruptcy that same year.

Ethos, which has raised more than $400 million in venture capital, could easily have met a similar fate. However, the company remains laser-focused on achieving profitability as the era of cheap capital and easy fundraising ends in 2022. “Not knowing what the ongoing funding climate is, we are very serious about securing profitability,” said Colis.

That financial discipline transformed it into a profitable company by mid-2023, according to IPO documents. Since then, Ethos has also maintained an annual revenue growth rate of more than 50%. In the nine months ended September 30, 2025, the company generated nearly $278 million in revenue and just under $46.6 million in net income.

However, the company ended its first day as a public company with a market capitalization of nearly $1.1 billion, a valuation well below the $2.7 billion it got the last private round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 in July 2021.

When asked why Ethos went public, Colis said a big part of the reason was to bring “more trust and credibility” to potential partners and clients. He explained that since many major insurance carriers are more than a century old, the public sale signals the company’s staying power.

Ethos’ largest outside shareholders include prominent companies including Sequoia, Accel, Google’s venture arm GV, and SoftBank, as well as General Catalyst and Heroic Ventures. Sequoia and Accel did not sell shares in the IPO, the company said exposed.