Why the fertility market is poised to explode

My co-author for this post, Leslie Schrock, is the author of a new book called Fertility Rules, published by Simon & Schuster. She also publishes a Substack with a weekly roundup of fertility-related news.

So how big is the fertility market really? Well, that’s the question that investors are grappling with as we speak. It’s a difficult one to answer, we think, because the sector today is a bit like the luxury travel market before the introduction of Airbnb. Demand is through the roof, but access is restricted to those who can afford it. The most widely-used interventions like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) remain out of reach for most people, particularly in the United States where there is almost zero public funding. But in the next few decades, we expect to see more democratization driven by a few key areas: health delivery advancements, new methods for testing and treatment, robotics and automation, artificial Intelligence, and novel biotechnology. All of that could burst the market wide open and create a lot of excitement about the category.

“IVF treatments will soon be more readily available and affordable, particularly over the next 10 to 20 years,” Brian Levine, a New York-based fertility doctor with CCRM, told us.