Pet Industry News
The deals, launches, and strategic moves behind the brands and operators shaping the industry.
Jane Lauder's TAW Ventures Buys Polkadog, Builds a Pet Wellness Portfolio
TAW Ventures, the pet health and wellness investment firm founded by Jane Lauder, has acquired Boston-based Polkadog from co-founders Rob Van Sickle and Deb Suchman. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is TAW's first announced acquisition and brings a founder-led, long-horizon ownership model to a premium pet category that has been shaped largely by private equity roll-ups.
Pawsible Ventures' First Cohort Maps the Pet-Health Infrastructure Bet
Pawsible Ventures unveiled its inaugural cohort of eight pet-health startups on April 23, selected from several hundred applicants. The list clusters tightly around AI-enabled vet-clinic infrastructure — a thesis that is unusually concentrated for an accelerator and one that coincides with parallel moves from Mars and Kennel Connection on the same preventive-care layer.
Mars Drops AI Periodontal Predictor Into a Stack It Already Owns
Mars's Waltham Petcare Science Institute has published a peer-reviewed, explainable-AI Bayesian network that predicts canine periodontal disease, the highest-volume preventive-care condition in dogs. Because Mars already owns Greenies, Antech, SYNLAB Vet, and roughly 3,000 clinics, the model drops into a vertically integrated commercial stack that IDEXX and Zoetis cannot match.
PetPax Is Raising $1M on a Delivery-Form Wedge in Pet Supplements
PetPax Co., winner of the 2026 Purina Pet Care Innovation Prize Grand Prize, is raising up to $1M in pre-seed capital and has secured $200K of it since the March 26 win. The company's SupplaMelts oral-film delivery platform is a bet that compliance, not formulation, is the unsolved problem in pet supplements.
DeepScan Raises $3.5M to Push Canine cfDNA Testing Into the Vet Mainstream
DeepScan Diagnostics raised $3.5 million led by existing investor Calm/Storm Ventures, with additional participation from European family offices and Business Finland. The capital will fund expansion of the company's CFD cfDNA biomarker test from its current 100-clinic installed base across the U.S., U.K., and Finland.
Spot & Tango Makes Its First Above-the-Line Push as DTC Fresh Food Math Shifts
Spot & Tango announced its largest marketing investment to date: $3.5M+ in TV and OOH, plus field marketing. The push moves the brand from performance to brand at $100M+ ARR and signals that DTC fresh pet food is entering category-conversion mode.
The Bird Bath Launches Terminal, Putting EBITDA Multiples and Practice Data on a SaaS Price Tag
The Bird Bath launched Terminal on April 21 — a subscription platform covering roughly 37,000 U.S. vet practices, 80+ corporate groups, and an analytics layer with EBITDA multiples and transaction activity. Pricing starts at $299 per month with CRM integrations coming, changing who can act on deal-grade practice data.