A group of senior living and healthcare stakeholders including Solera Senior Living CEO Adam Kaplan have spun up a new investment fund meant to help grow innovative tech for operators.

Venture capital firm Equitage Ventures this week announced the final close of a new $47.3 million fund, its first ever. The company’s aim with the fund is to be “more than capital” by funding, distribution and providing strategic guidance. Initially, the fund will target smaller, tech companies in which to invest and grow where Equitage believes it can add the most value.

Equitage is led by an investment team that includes Adam Kaplan along with Russell Hirsch, a co-founder of Generator Ventures; and Daniel Kaplan, an investor who also worked with Generator Ventures.

“We wake up every morning passionate about transforming senior care … through this broad-based, digital health approach, investing in technology and technology-enabled services,” Hirsch told Senior Housing News.

The fund is unique in that it includes backing from a group of limited partners across the continuum of care. Though Equitage declined to name specific LPs, Daniel Kaplan said the list includes leaders of senior living and skilled nursing operators, home care and home health agencies, hospices, a publicly traded healthcare technology company, a publicly traded healthcare real estate investment trust (REIT) and a multi-billion-dollar Japanese conglomerate.

Equitage also is taking guidance from a group of advisors that includes Formation Capital and Senior Living Transformation Company Founder Arnie Whitman along with Nomi Health executive Sara Ratner, Sondermind President Jennifer Meyer and former e4health CEO Matthew Zubiller

The fund comes at a time when senior living and other health care-adjacent companies — not to mention payers and seniors themselves — are awash in a sea of potentially useful technology. But with so many companies to choose from, choosing the right partner is fraught with risk. Equitage’s strategy is centered on talking to customers and prospective customers, many of which are represented among its limited partners.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, Equitage’s leaders see a “healthy pipeline” of companies to invest in.

Separating wheat from chaff in tech

With its new fund, Equitage is seeking to find companies that will make an impact in senior living and other related industries. That can be a tough task for senior living operators, who have myriad companies and products to choose from when implementing new technology.

Equitage’s biggest strength lies in the experience of its investment team, advisors and limited partners. Adam Kaplan has spent many years weighing and implementing new tech in his role at Solera Senior Living, including for the kind of value-based care models he thinks will help lead the industry into the future. Additionally, Hirsch has a 34-year venture capital career in biotechnology and medical devices and eight years of senior care-related investments, while Daniel Kaplan worked at ClearCare and has invested in the industry though Generator Ventures. The team’s select investments include Apploi, IntelyCare, Post Acute Analytics, VyncaCare and Third Eye Health.

The firm will use the experience of its advisors and LPs to its advantage, according to Daniel Kaplan. As the firm evaluates investment opportunities, it will do so “with the voice of the customer being the voice in our ear,” he said. In other words, the company will invest in tech with the eyes of a senior living or health care operator.

Adam Kaplan added that through its investments, Equitage will help companies in senior housing and care make better sense of a “very noisy landscape” for senior living technology.

“You’re constantly getting cold calls from entrepreneurs or business development personnel that are telling you that their product is the best, it’s going to solve all your problems,” he said. “And it’s just very difficult for most of senior living, whether it’s an operating company or an investment company, to navigate through that.”

Senior living operations are also getting more demanding, and Adam Kaplan said it’s “no longer good enough” to simply stabilize occupancy, they must also improve results. As such, he sees a “real need” for companies to “successfully identify which [tech] entrepreneurs are building viable companies, to counsel them and to provide sound governance to them, to scale those companies successfully.”

“You need process improvements, you need staffing efficiencies, you need care revenue capture, and you need new revenue streams,” he said. “And you’re not going to be able to achieve that unless you have capital flowing to back good, talented entrepreneurs and to structure the right council around the table again to help them scale successfully.”

While Equitage hasn’t yet announced any new investments for its fund, early investment themes might include documentation automation companies in both home health and skilled nursing, passive monitoring technologies, oral healthcare delivery, care management and navigation services, compliance support for senior living and skilled nursing, behavioral health and dementia and family caregiving.

Looking ahead, over the next several years, the fund is focusing on investing its existing dollars before working to raise a successor fund.

“We started something, and we’re not finished,” Daniel said. “We’re really at the starting line now.”

Fund arrives as senior living tech takes off

In 2025, the senior living industry is undergoing a tech transformation fueled by the need to grow and evolve for a new group of customers, the baby boomers. Some companies are building and adapting value-based care models and using AI-powered processes to collect the data to power those programs, for example.

Companies with services that use payment sources like Medicare Advantage, which recently had its capitation rates increased to 5.06% from 2.23%, are growing in 2025, making this an opportune time for Equitage’s fund, Daniel Kaplan said. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) also has set a goal that all Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries will be in an accountable care organization by 2030. But coordinating that care and collecting health data will require more tech sophistication.

“I think that acquiring older adults and their families through digital channels for more digital first products, whether it be apps, services or software, is going to be a much more investable and real trend as we get closer to 2030 and beyond,” he said. “We’d like to see some more products added there too.”

Equitage is on the lookout for companies that have a range of services for residents and their community operators, such as products that aid financial technology for older adults, sell long-term insurance in a new way or create a new social media platform for older adults.

“The system is maturing to be able to effectively invest in opportunities in this space, and that’s the great thing,” Hirsch said. “We want to be partners with entrepreneurs, LPs and with other funds that have interest in this space.”

Because of the size of the fund and the expertise of investors in it, there’s “always going to be room for us at the table,” according to Hirsch.