Cue Health's at-home molecular test bet: $2.3B IPO, then Chapter 7 wind-down in May 2024

Cue Health was founded in 2010 to build an at-home flu test, then pivoted hard when COVID-19 hit: it won FDA authorization for a palm-sized molecular test — swab, cartridge and a reusable reader that returned results in about 20 minutes and uploaded them to an app. A $481 million US government contract in 2020 and a 2021 deal to supply Google's US employees made it one of the most visible testing startups of the pandemic.

The bet was that lab-quality molecular testing could move from clinics into homes and workplaces, and that pandemic-era demand would become a durable market. Revenue exploded from $5 million in the first half of 2020 to $201.9 million in the first half of 2021, more than 80% of it from the public sector. Cue went public on Nasdaq in September 2021, raising $200 million at a $2.3 billion valuation.

When the pandemic faded, so did the market. Demand collapsed, the company cut staff repeatedly and teetered on insolvency, and in May 2024 the FDA warned consumers not to use Cue's only authorized COVID test kit. The company reversed an earlier plan to keep operating with a smaller workforce: on May 20 it filed a WARN notice, and on May 24 all US employees received their final paychecks.

Cue filed voluntary Chapter 7 petitions in Delaware on May 28, 2024, announcing it would wind down with a bankruptcy trustee appointed to sell assets and pay creditors. The once-$2.3 billion public company ended in liquidation less than three years after its IPO, and STAT, the San Diego Union-Tribune and other outlets documented the shutdown that week.