China-US feud forces PatientsLikeMe to find new investor – press

Increasingly fraught Sino-American relations are beginning to have a real impact on the health sector, after it emerged that the health networking startup PatientsLikeMe is being forced to find a buyer after the Trump administration ordered its Chinese majority owner to divest its stake. According to CNBC, the divestiture is happening following a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is aggressively cracking down on Chinese investment in the country. In 2017 the company raised $100m towards its technology allowing patients to link up with people with the same disease and find clinical trials, selling a majority stake to Shenzhen-based iCarbonX, which is in turn by the giant Chinese firm Tencent. Citing several anonymous sources CNBC said it started receiving notifications from the committee last year to try and force a divestiture.