September 8, 2026
Digital health has long captivated investors and industry participants with the promise of making healthcare more accessible, affordable and efficient. Yet despite significant investment across the sector, few companies have found a way to deliver digital care at scale, profitably. Hinge Health has emerged as one of the notable exceptions.
In this episode of Exceptional Leaders, Morgan Stanley Healthcare Technology Analyst Craig Hettenbach sits down with Hinge Health Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Perez at the company's Movement Conference in Chicago to discuss how AI, motion tracking and virtual care are transforming physical therapy— and what that blueprint could mean for the rest of healthcare.
PEREZ
Patients are getting increasingly comfortable with getting care directly from technology. They appreciate the convenience; they appreciate the accessibility; they appreciate the consistent quality. By digitizing the care itself and allowing people to do the care at home or at work, or when they’re traveling, wherever they may be, we’re able to substantially boost the adherence to physical therapy.
HETTENBACH
Physical therapy is one of the most recommended forms of care for injuries and many chronic health conditions. Yet, only about nine percent of people who could benefit from PT follow through with it, common barriers being provider wait lists, out-of-pocket costs, and challenges getting to and from appointments. Born out of the co-founders’ own experience with physical therapy, Hinge Health is using technology to expand access while helping employers and health plans lower costs. As Morgan Stanley’s Healthcare Technology Analyst, I’ve been following how digital health companies are trying to make care more accessible and affordable, as well as profitable. This has been a difficult category, with many well-funded companies struggling to build sustainable models, but Hinge Health has been the exception. I wanted to learn more, so I traveled to Chicago for Hinge Health’s Movement Conference to sit down with Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Perez and get a first-hand look at how technology is reshaping physical therapy and what that could mean for the future of healthcare.
HETTENBACH
What inspired the idea to start Hinge Health?
PEREZ
I was on my bike, and I crashed into a Camaro, and I shattered my arm and my leg when I was 12 years old, and I got life-flighted to the hospital. I had multiple surgeries over the next 12 months, as well as 12 months of physical therapy, rehab, and what I remember the most was the stress. But not just for myself, but especially for my parents: going to 50-plus appointments, paying co-pays, taking time off work, watching their insurance premiums go up as well. And it was really, really challenging along that way. And when I met my co-founder, he had actually had a similar experience. He had torn his ACL. He had 12 months of rehab, and we felt technology could have delivered our care more efficiently, more effectively, at much lower cost. Our vision is to use technology to scale and automate the delivery of care, and we started with physical therapy. But if you think about healthcare overall, it's usually very, very manual, and that's one of the reasons there could be long wait times, things can be very expensive, and there hasn't been as much innovation in the care delivery itself.
We’ve been able to automate away around 95% of human clinician hours associated with physical therapy, while driving an over 50% pain reduction.
HETTENBACH
Who was the fastest to embrace the idea of virtual therapy?
PEREZ
It would have been employers. The average cost that an employer pays is around $10,000 or so per employee, and if the employee has a family, it could be $23,000-$24,000 per year in health care costs. And in 2026, health care costs went up: double-digit inflation for most employers, far outpacing salary inflation. And when you're able to give people a more effective, efficient, and accessible path to physical therapy, downstream costs go down.
HETTENBACH
Most healthcare technology focuses on helping clinicians document, diagnose, and manage workflows. Hinge Health uses technology not just to support care but to deliver it. Through motion tracking and AI-supported guidance in a remote care team, the company gives members real-time feedback and more frequent engagement than a traditional appointment-based model.
HETTENBACH
How important is technology to kind of bend the cost curve here?
PEREZ
There's a lot of technology in a hospital setting, but often the technology is on the periphery, enabling care but not delivering the care itself. The care is still delivered by humans—you know, doctors, nurses, technicians who are highly trained, often in short supply, and very expensive—and so, what we’ve done
is we’ve used technology to automate the delivery itself. But getting paid for innovative technology is the biggest barrier to innovation in healthcare, and the current reimbursement architecture incentivizes sustaining innovation, not disruptive innovation. And so that's one of the reasons why new payment models and breakthrough technologies, particularly around care automation, have had difficulty scaling.
HETTENBACH
From a virtual perspective, what are some things that can help, to kind of expand the market?
PEREZ
There's a lot of reasons why access to PT is limited. One: there's a shortage of physical therapists out there. So oftentimes, if you're trying to book an appointment, it could be a very long wait time, particularly in certain urban areas; in rural areas, you're going to have challenges in that there might be a paucity of physical therapists and not enough of them around. And so you might have to drive a far distance. Another reason that can make PT inaccessible is that a course of physical therapy could be 8 to 12 to, you know, 16-ish sessions, if not more, and to take time off work, pay a co-pay, sit in traffic, find childcare for two to four times a week over multiple weeks could be really, really challenging for a lot of people. And so they end up doing three to four sessions and then failing out of physical therapy. By digitizing the care itself and allowing people to do the care at home or at work or when they're traveling, wherever they may be, where it will substantially boost the adherence to physical therapy. People do, on average, over 30 exercise therapy sessions or they're doing a lot more care for us because the adherence is much easier to do.
HETTENBACH
You're adopting AI. Can we touch on that, in terms of how important that is for the care team, in terms of some of the productivity and efficiencies that brings to, kind of, their daily routine?
PEREZ
We've been working on this for years, and this allows us to automate your exercise therapy guidance itself, right from home. Using the front-facing camera on your phone, we’re able to track 100 unique landmarks on your body so you could do your exercises and have the confidence that you're doing them correctly.
We also use AI to scale our care team interactions. Instead of a physical therapist reviewing Craig's chart and reviewing all of your background history for your back pain or your shoulder pain, our AI is able to summarize that instantly for our care team, help them understand what's the best next action for Craig's health, and even pre-write messages for the care team to edit and to send. Also, we’ve recently launched Robin, our AI care assistant for members to speak directly with our AI for questions that they may have.
HETTENBACH
Hinge Health started with physical therapy, but Perez describes a broader ambition: use software, hardware, and clinical expertise to automate and scale more parts of care. That expansion now includes pelvic floor health and migraines.
PEREZ
We started with traditional physical therapy for outpatient physical therapy. We also do women's pelvic health, which is a component of physical therapy. And we just launched migraine as well. And we believe our model of using software connected to hardware to automate care, having specialists available when needed to perform evaluations or create custom treatment plans, making personal referrals when needed, and in-person providers when needed as well. We got FDA clearance for our migraine care program in April, and since then, we have now closed over 300 customers have adopted our migraine care program covering three million American adults. We’re able to rapidly drive adoption of innovative new tools because of the distribution reach that we have.
HETTENBACH
Longevity, people living longer, mobility, physical conditioning: so how do you think about that on a longer-term basis?
PEREZ
The key thing is not just about life span. It's about health span. Most people, as they get older, what they’re most interested in is their health span: How long can I be independent? How long can I live alone? How long can I still take a walk with my spouse? Or to take a walk with my grandkids, or bend down and play with my kids? Musculoskeletal health is this hub for the rest of your health. It has such a concomitant impact on your mental health, on your cardiometabolic health, on your social wellbeing.
I remember one gentleman, and he had severe knee pain, and it had been really impacting his ability to walk. His biggest goal was to be able to dance with his daughter at her wedding, and so our care team, our physical therapist, developed a very personalized care program for him. Our health coach helped him navigate the challenges he has in his life—his work commitments, his family commitments, etc.—so that he could find 15 to 20 minutes, four or five times a week to focus on his knee pain. His pain went from six or seven out of ten, down to around a one-and-a-half out of ten, and he was able to dance with his daughter at her wedding.
HETTENBACH
Hinge Health’s ability to scale came from two early advantages: technology that was ahead of the competition and partnerships with major health plans already selling into employers.
PEREZ
A lot of startup entrepreneurs I speak to, you know, ask for tips on how to raise capital. I say, “You should really ask for tips on how to close customers, because that’s when it matters.” And if you’re closing customers, everything else falls into place. And revenue coming in also just solves a lot of problems. Just focus on closing customers. Don’t just build the product. Make sure you’re selling it, and move both of those things forward at the same time, particularly in the early stages of the business.
HETTENBACH
What are some of the things that you prepared for leading up into the IPO process that have helped you kind of get on the right path here?
PEREZ
Well, firstly, focus on the forecastability of your business. You have to be able to predict your business. And even if your business is five, seven, ten years old, you might not fully understand in a granular detail the drivers of your revenue as well as your cost structure. Secondly is making sure you get your cost structure right. A lot of companies were over capitalized in the 2021 period, in the Covid period, and maybe are still over-capitalized today, particularly AI companies. And that makes it really easy for you to spend too much money. And thirdly: What are your revenue drivers? And could you forecast ahead growth over many, many years, and make sure you really plot out how you're going to be growing over the next several years. At Hinge Health, we’ve been fortunate to reaccelerate growth over the past several years, and that's really played well.
HETTENBACH
What are some of the things that have helped you develop into the executive you are today?
PEREZ
We've always been curious. A lot of founders, over time, they try to either specialize or they become professional delegators, and they don't understand the business enough. We still do work ourselves. We'll create a slide deck ourselves, or we'll write our own memos. We'll dive into the code ourselves. I'll still take client meetings myself. And we think that makes us better executives, and we think it makes the rest of our team better too, by mandating that leaders are able to do real work.
HETTENBACH
That's great. So a lot of exciting things to look forward to in the future. Well Dan, thanks so much for spending time with us today.
PEREZ
Thanks for having me.
In this engaging series from Morgan Stanley, experts from across the firm sit down with leaders at world-class companies for insightful conversations covering everything from leadership lessons to foundational changes in industries, markets and society.
SCOTT KIRBY
Most people confuse management and leadership. If you can inspire 120,000 people with a vision, you can accomplish a whole lot more than if you’re going through a checklist every day.
RAVI SHANKER
Since its inaugural flight a century ago, United Airlines has defined commercial air travel, with a history of firsts, spanning everything from the modern airliner and flight attendants to computerized flight planning. Today, United connects more people to more destinations than any carrier on the planet. But it isn’t just about growth; United is focused on improving the travel experience for all passengers. Behind this vision, CEO Scott Kirby has spent his career thinking differently about what it means to run and lead an airline. When the industry was impacted by Covid, United invested for growth and emerged stronger. Even as corporate boards began confronting deglobalization, Kirby leaned into international expansion. And now, as many leaders view AI as a way to cut headcount, Kirby sees technology as a way to improve human interactions, not replace them. As Morgan Stanley’s lead North American airlines analyst, I want to learn more about how Kirby makes decisions in an industry that faces constant uncertainty. So I traveled to United’s headquarters in Chicago, where I sat down with Kirby on the day United turned one hundred and got a close look at Kirby’s approach to leadership and discussed some Sambas.
RAVI
Thank you, Scott, for having me here today on the actual one hundredth anniversary of United. Congratulations.
SCOTT
Yeah, today’s the day: a hundred years.
RAVI
Happy birthday!
SCOTT
Thank you. And how do you like the shoes? Hundred-year anniversary Sambas.
RAVI
That is fantastic. You graduated from the Air Force Academy. Did you originally aspire to fly professionally? And what prompted you to go a different direction?
SCOTT
I went to the Air Force Academy intending to be a pilot and then an astronaut, and while there, you get to fly, and I was out in an F-4—dogfighting, aerial, broke the sound barrier-
RAVI
Wow.
SCOTT
-and at the end of it, the pilot told me to close my eyes and fly straight and level by feel, and I was at a 30-degree left bank and he said, “Use the instruments,” and I did, and I felt like I was going to fall out of the seat to the right, and he laughed at me and said, “You’re never going to be a fighter pilot. You’re going to be a cargo pilot.” And that moment, I decided, “I’m sure you’re right about the first one, but you are dead wrong about the second one.” So I didn’t go to pilot training.
RAVI
To the present day: you may not be a fighter pilot, but you operate in an environment of near-constant volatility. So how do you handle the daily realities of this environment we are in right now?
SCOTT
You’re trying to figure out on the fly what’s going to happen, trying to look over the horizon, trying to read extensively—I’ve done that my whole life, I read three hours a day on average—but I’m genuinely curious, and when you do that, you connect the dots I think that other people can’t connect and don’t see. I think this has happened a lot of times in my career: to try to see things earlier and how to take advantage of stuff when I have a view that is different than the consensus view.
RAVI
How do you carve out the space and time to think long term, with everything going on?
SCOTT
I’m really good at time management, and I don’t waste time: in my personal life, professional life, I’m not on social media—what a time suck—I don’t really watch TV, another time suck. But in business, less than four hours of meetings a day on my calendar is my rule. It gives you time to think, it gives you time to read, it gives me time to just call people and ask questions, but also, I have a great team. And I feel like if I am trying to micromanage, I’ve done something wrong.
RAVI
You’re known as a highly data-driven leader. So as data has become more pervasive, has your approach to leadership changed as well?
SCOTT
I don’t think it’s changed so much because of data—in fact, I probably use data less explicitly the further I go in my career. I could tell you pretty close what it’s been for the last thirty days; I know about the operation; I know what we’ve done; I know what each of the other airlines have done. But I really use that more to paint the palette of thinking about other bigger decisions. And I draw a big distinction between management and leadership.
Management is about compliance; it’s about running the checklist: how many people showed up for work on time. But leadership is different; it’s about inspiration and vision. And compliance is really important; you need people to do that. But leadership is more rare.
The further you move up anywhere in your career, the more your job indexes from management functions to leadership functions.
RAVI
Is that your leadership version? Did you have a mentor? How did you, kind of frame that?
SCOTT
I’ve learned a lot more from watching people make mistakes. And I’ve learned a lot, more of the positive examples, from reading: you know, Winston Churchill’s top of my list of heroes. You know, like, what would Winston Churchill do in a situation like this? Abraham Lincoln is another one. But I also learn from myself too, like mistakes that I’ve made, like you make a mistake like, “To thine own self be true,” what a great line. When you screw something up, like I don’t mind making a mistake; I hate making a mistake twice.
RAVI
What are the feedback systems that you have, to maybe see some of the things that you're not seeing?
SCOTT
You have to spend a lot of time out, talking with people. I have the easiest job of anyone at United because I have only really one responsibility: create a company that our employees are proud of. And so I look for that pride, and I spend a lot of time out in the operation, you know, I—every week I'm out, you know, either virtually or in person, talking to groups of new captains and talking to groups of new pursers at United, and you can tell if people feel proud of the company. People want to be on a winning team, and winning is contagious.
RAVI
Can you give us an example of an instance where the data pointed one way, but your gut or instinct kind of said there was something different?
SCOTT
Covid. You know, when Covid started, the data to me pointed to like, this is a global pandemic, and it was hard for me to understand why no one else knew it. We were just a couple weeks ahead of the globe-
RAVI
-you were the first.
SCOTT
-but, you know, we went off and raised two billion dollars at three percent interest two days before the NBA walked off the court and it would’ve been impossible, and we shrunk more than everyone else quickly. But then during Covid, the data got wrong. All the experts believed that air travel demand would never recover, and all the surveys—if you did surveys—people said they were never going to fly again.
And so, literally every global long-haul airline in the world, except United, permanently retired part of their global long haul wide-bodied fleet and shrunk. And we looked at that, and I said, “I think that’s just the wrong decision.” Instead, we did the biggest aircraft orders in history during Covid.
RAVI
If you were not the CEO, what job would you like to have and why would you be good at it?
SCOTT
The foundation of an airline is the route network. That is our asset. You have to learn the whole airline; you have to learn what makes it tick, what makes it work, what makes it profitable, what doesn’t work, what works operationally. You really have to learn the whole network to be good at route planning.
RAVI
Global expansion is obviously a major focus for United. You fly to 385 destinations globally. What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities?
SCOTT
Flying globally is—it’s what customers want, so that's the starting point. But it also creates unique challenges and opportunities. I mean, you know, we're just exposed to everything that happens anywhere in the world. You know, if there's war in the Middle East, you know, we're not just hit by fuel prices, we fly to those places. When the war in Ukraine started, we, you know, flew over Russia. Anytime something happens in the globe, we're exposed to it, but it's where our customers want.
When you’re an airline as large as United, it actually—to find new destinations, it means that we can’t just use data. We’re flying to places like Nuuk, Greenland, which no US airline has ever flown to. And so, you have to find other sources and other ideas and make bets on what will work. This summer, we’re starting two destinations in Spain and Portugal that are part of pilgrimages: where people fly into Lisbon and they walk two hundred miles to another destination. We’d seen a lot of one-way traffic in but not return traffic in and realized that, and it’s been booked up like crazy, so it’s done really well.
RAVI
What gives United an edge when it comes to recruiting pilots, flight attendants, or anybody else who wants to work for United, and kind of pass that culture through?
SCOTT
We really are at the top of the food chain for aviation and for industries at large. We're growing faster every year in absolute than any airline in history has done, which gives you lots of opportunities. And if you come to United, it feels like you're on the winning team. I just came from speaking to a group of new hires. We had people from all of the major airlines. A lot of them were talking about, “In my area, United is doing this, and you're the leader here.” And so they're all excited to come. People that come to United are usually coming for a career. We still create the kind of careers that used to be common in the United States. But, you know, a pilot, a mechanic, a gate agent, you know, can start here when they're twenty years old. And when they get to the top of the scale, and certainly with a little bit of overtime, they can make six digits; they have great benefits; you know, they can work for a lifetime. They can buy a house; they can send their kids to college. It's an important part of the fabric of America. And being able to create those kinds of careers, it’s—we're proud to do it.
RAVI
Just given the thought and effort you guys put into recruitment, kind of how does that translate into customer experience? Kind of that culture of United coming through?
SCOTT
What we've tried to do is actually hire people for attitude, instead of hiring for technical skills. We can train someone to be a flight attendant. We can train someone to be a gate agent. What we can't train is to be a people person that cares. So we try to hire people that have that attitude that are really our “people people.” I mean, we're in the business of connecting people and uniting the world.
RAVI
The premiumization of air travel is a major theme in the industry, kind of a big change versus the last decade. So how is United kind of building brand loyalty across all segments?
SCOTT
So I pushed back actually a little bit on the premiumization of the industry. It is happening, but I start by saying, “We're investing nose to tail for all customers.” And I think that actually the gap between our Economy and other airlines’ Economies is probably bigger even than the gap between Premium to Premium; there's a gap in both places. But, you know, with things like Starlink throughout the airplane, seatback entertainment throughout the airplane, the app—you know, we have the best technology of any airline in the world, the app. Anyone that uses it knows it. So we're really focused on creating products, technology service that all customers like. We have a lot of Premium demand, and we’re investing more heavily. You know, the latest 797, you know, I think is probably the best airplane flying in the Western world. The CRJ 450, you know, when you're flying to small cities, you know, it's like flying on a private airplane. It's the opposite trend of what most airlines do, and we took 18% of the seats off the airplane.
RAVI
So when it comes to innovation, kind of either on board or on the ground or offline, how do you come up with kind of innovative new ideas in terms of customer offerings?
SCOTT
I try to go by the philosophy that Henry Ford had and Steve Jobs had. Henry Ford said something along the lines of, “If you ask people what they want, they’d tell you, a faster horse.” And Steve Jobs famously eschewed any kind of consumer survey stuff because he wanted to invent something that they didn't know they wanted yet. Some of the things that we put in the app are not the kind of things that people ask questions about. You know, we put a scorecard in for frequent fliers last year: How many flights did you take? How many hours? How many miles did you fly? We’ve started putting the airport map, so you can see when you're on the ground where you have to taxi.
I want us to surprise and wow our customers every year with something new. So then they get on the airplane, they say, “I've never seen an airline do that; I never even thought of this before.” So we're trying to figure out what people will love, even if they haven't asked for it yet.
RAVI
You just added the TSA wait times to the app. I didn't know that was possible.
SCOTT
We've also added technology on the app that if you opt in, we’ll track you, so we can know to wait for you for connecting gates. We want to do things like deliver food to your gate, if you need a connecting flight and you want to be able to order food. But one of the other things is, it'll give real time waits, trying to get really real-time data to customers, and we're the only airline that’s doing it.
RAVI
Moving to the topic of AI. So how does AI improve how United operates? And what does that mean for your passengers?
SCOTT
It's a great tool. It's going to do a lot of things—it does do a lot of things—really well. But I do not think that the primary use case of AI is replacing the work that everyone does. And if that's the primary use case, like, it's for sure a bubble, because we're spending way too much for that. Too many people are getting dependent on AI, and like thing that people are using AI for is summarizing documents. Like, that seems to me to be the number one use case. I actually want to read the book. Because all the cool learnings are, you know, on page 312 in a little paragraph that there's some cool insight, and I think you're going to miss all that.
The cool thing about AI is the things that you can do that were impossible or impractical before. One of my favorite examples is, anytime there's a delay or cancellation, I want the team to pretend I'm on the airplane and I've called the network operating center: “Why is my flight delayed?” Whatever they would tell me, I want to tell customers 100% of the time. We're better at it than any other airline in the world, but we're not even into the game yet. We're still in the pre-game. [It’s] really hard to do without AI. It's also going to help us, I think, in our network operating center, when we’re deciding which flights—when stuff happens, you know, when weather hits and airports close, like it's one of those problems that has multiple tentacles that can last for days: crew and maintenance and all kinds of other implications. And they're all stochastic, like you know, you don't know for sure what's going to happen down the line.
RAVI
Scott, you mentioned that Covid was an instance where the data pointed one direction, but your instinct took another direction. What is that moment today?
SCOTT
Oh, oil prices and the war in Iran. From the time that MEU left Asia for the Middle East, I thought the forward curve was wrong. I thought oil was going to be higher for longer. And so we’ve been preparing for that at United. The experts that I talked to back then all told me: worst case, the Straits of Hormuz are open by the end of March. I think oil prices are going to be higher for longer. We at United are preparing for that. That's our base case planning assumption. I think there may be an opportunity to take advantage of it when our competitors are managing more by hope instead of reality.
RAVI
Scott, so when you eventually do step out of the CEO role, what do you hope people would say that you changed about United and the industry?
SCOTT
I want to have United to have launched a new era in aviation—what it means to be an airline. A lot of it's going to be technology—the technology that takes all of the uncertainty and stress of travel. Make travel fun. And my second one is to leave behind a CEO who's better than me.
RAVI
Well, we won’t be making that change anytime soon. Scott, thank you for joining us. It has been real fun.
SCOTT
Thank you.
RAVI
Appreciate it.
Salem
The concept of wellness is no longer just about burning fat and building muscle. It’s expanded into something far more holistic, including how we eat, how we sleep and how we manage stress. Corporate attitudes towards well-being have also changed.
Carvalho
Employee well-being is being discussed at boards now because the liability of not having employee well-being is super high. And it’s going to be even more relevant going forward.
Salem
One leader who saw this shift long before it became mainstream is Wellhub’s CEO and co-founder, Cesar Carvalho.
Carvalho
The next step is corporate well-being becoming a standard that every single company has to offer, that every single employee demands their employer to do.
Salem
His vision turned the company into a multi-billion-dollar business that is reshaping how organizations and employees think about wellness. As part of Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking team, I’ve had a front-row seat to Wellhub’s remarkable expansion. I sat down with Cesar recently to talk about the company’s journey and where the future of wellness is headed.
Salem
Cesar, it's great to have you here.
Carvalho
Thank you for having me. Great to be here as well.
Salem
For those who are not familiar with Wellhub, tell us a little bit about what you guys do.
Carvalho
Wellhub is a technology company that's making well-being accessible to every single employee. And we're also helping change behaviors for the better at scale. And right now, we work with more than 40,000 corporate clients, and we have over 5 million paid subscribers. Those subscribers are visiting more than 100,000 partners—different gyms, studios and apps—more accessible, more flexible, and have more options than any traditional gym membership.
Salem
What was it that inspired you to do this?
Carvalho
Growing up in the countryside in a rural area, I've always had well-being close to heart. I was a super active kid with sports and etcetera, and when I started working, they all went away and I completely forgot about that part of my life. I was doing my MBA, and I took a break. And I noticed there was an opportunity here to bring those two worlds together again and help not only myself but every single other employee who was struggling with not keeping up with well-being. And that was when I decided to drop out of my MBA to pursue this amazing mission. And 13 years later, here I am still driving it forward.
Salem
How has corporate well-being evolved, you know, across all companies and their attitudes towards offering this type of thing to employees?
Carvalho
It started as a cost center, and now it has already moved into an investment strategy and part of the overall strategy for companies. Well-being used to be an app for meditation, an app for nutrition, an app for physical activity, some partnerships with gyms nearby the office, or maybe an in-company gym. And the problem with those legacy solutions is that the employee participation on those are extremely low. The new version of employee well-being is very different. It's about engagement. It's about the products employees would use every single month, many times per week.
Salem
The ecosystem that Wellhub has, from the companies to the wellness partners to the employees: it's very powerful. And I want you to talk through a little bit the interplay across those three groups.
Carvalho
Starting with the employees: they have access to a membership that never existed in the well-being space. It costs less than a traditional gym membership but gives every single employee access to thousands of locations, many different wellness apps for physical activity, nutrition, sleep, meditation, and therapy. The companies that are clients of Wellhub love the products we bring to them, because we get a lot of those people who were not previously active, were not previously engaging with well-being, to sign up for the first time. They want to invest, to get those people to change behaviors for the better, and they reap the benefits as well. And the last part of the equation here are our wellness partners: the different gyms, studios, and apps we work with that are included in our memberships. Because we're getting a lot of new people into this ecosystem, they're getting incremental revenue, they're increasing their earnings. Our ecosystem is the reason why our model is so robust and why also it's growing super-fast.
Salem
In December of 2025, Wellhub reached a significant milestone: one billion check-ins, representing a tenfold increase in just three years. That means one billion moments when subscribers visited a gym, took an online fitness class, or paused for a mindfulness break. For Cesar, this growth reflects a broader shift: companies and employees are placing ever greater value on health and fitness.
Salem
What is the business case to the company itself?
Carvalho
We help people change behaviors and get to a healthier life. And we track ROI in three different fronts. The first one is health care costs. Health care cost is probably the single largest expense after payroll for every single company. That cost is growing at a very fast pace, and prevention is the key to save 70% of those costs. And even though that's obvious, only 4% of all spend goes into prevention. A second part is on employee retention and the acquisition of talent. And it's going to be quite clear, for the employees currently working in the company and for prospective employees, that those companies who are embracing well-being, that they care about them. And those companies are going to have an amazing ability to attract people over time and retain the best talent. The last part is on sick leaves. Employees who are active or constantly exercising our engagement with well-being take fewer days off, and therefore they contribute more, not only to their families, to their lives because they're being productive, not sick, but also to their companies as well.
Salem
In 2019, Cesar decided to move the company’s headquarters from Sao Paulo to New York. Since then, Wellhub has rapidly expanded into major U.S. markets. But growth doesn’t stop in the Americas.
Talk to me about your strategy for further international expansion.
Carvalho
Most companies start in the U.S., they grow very fast, and then they sort the international piece afterwards, and then they struggle with the different currencies, languages, and the localization strategy for every single small market. I think the benefit of Wellhub is that we sorted that international piece first. We sorted the complexity, and we solved for it. And now our most important challenge, which we're executing successfully, is scaling very fast in the U.S., a huge market where well-being is more prevalent than in other places, and it's at the forefront of innovation in this space.
Salem
The fact that wellness partners are incentivized to join the platform does make you very insulated from the different things that change in the fitness and wellness industry.
Carvalho
I've been doing this for 13 years. It happens all the time. It's like the movies industry: there's a new blockbuster every year. You know, pickleball was the most recent one in the U.S. There are new ones coming. You know, CrossFit was at the peak at some point in time. Zumba, you know, and it will keep happening. And this is what keeps well-being fresh and why companies are better off picking a platform that's constantly getting better over time, versus trying to build each one of these solutions on their own to each of their employees.
Salem
After stepping away from a traditional corporate path to build a company that reimagines work-life balance, Cesar is now on a mission to turn every organization into a wellness company: one where employees check in with their well-being every day. And that philosophy starts with him.
Salem
I’ve gotta know, a day-in-the-life of the CEO of Wellhub, what are you doing start to finish?
Carvalho
It starts with a high-intensity workout, a sauna and a shower, before I jump into calls with my team. I try to have a healthy lunch, some meditation, calls with our clients and partners to get feedback and build a better product. I try to use Headspace so I can meditate and to hear sleep stories so I can go to bed on a high note. Look, I use Wellhub every single day: visiting our partners, trying different activities. And to me, that is what makes me a better CEO. But in addition to using Wellhub every single day, even when I'm traveling—last week I was in Germany, used our international check-ins to visit Holmes Place there. This morning we're here at Life Time. I already did my check in the morning, you know, to exercise before I work, so I try to integrate it in my routine. I try to meet with my team in healthy events. You know, so instead of going to a bar, why don't we do a yoga class together or a meditation session together? Meeting with our partners or vendors: why not to do it in a healthy way so that we build on those habits?
Salem
Can you talk a little bit about your leadership style? How are you able to inspire your employees?
Carvalho
If I had to pick two words, I would pick “empower” and “trust.” Empower because I deeply believe all the decisions in the company, they need to be made, either by my direct reports or by their direct reports. And I'm very big on pushing decision-making down so that we can be the best at making those decisions, considering the perspective of whoever is running the business closest to action. The second thing about trust is about treating employees like adults, giving them flexibility if they need the chance to, like, prioritize well-being and still deliver the results that are expected of them.
Salem
If I were to go 20 years into the future and look back, what is the type of legacy that you personally and your company would like to leave?
Carvalho
What we're building here is not only critical for individuals themselves—you know, if you're active, if you're exercising, we're going to live longer and we're going to live better lives as well—but this is also critical for society and for companies. My legacy, I want it to be to have every single company be also perceived as a wellness company. And I want well-being not to be something employees do twice a week but for it to be a daily habit. And if that happens in the world, I think my kids are going to live in a better world 20 years from today, and that will be an amazing legacy every person would be very proud to live.
Salem
Cesar, thank you so much for being here. It was great catching up and learning more about the company.
Carvalho
Thank you for having me, Emeel.
Salem
The day is not over, though, until we do a workout.
Carvalho
Let’s go for a workout together.
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