ZOE is a leading London-based science and nutrition company redefining personalised nutrition by combining scientific research and machine learning. ZOE is transforming the health of millions through its podcast, evidence-based newsletter, and personalised nutrition programme. Backed by cutting-edge research, ZOE’s membership has helped over 100,000 people improve their nutrition and well-being. Wolf, formerly the chief product officer at Criteo, where he oversaw its expansion to over 2,000 employees, $1.00b in revenue, and a NASDAQ listing, brings extensive experience to ZOE’s mission to improve people’s health.

The company spun out of King’s College London and focuses on personalised dietary recommendations based on an individual’s biological data. ZOE uses artificial intelligence, and microbiome metagenomics research to provide users with actionable insights to improve their health. Since being founded in 2017, the company has secured £89.9m in equity funding across multiple funding rounds from investors such as Balderton Capital and Ahren Innovation Capital. In July 2024, the company raised £11.7m in its latest funding round, backed by US-based Coefficient Capital, as it plans to expand into the US market. Zoe’s research into the gut microbiome has given rise to a platform capable of helping users address health concerns, such as energy levels and sleep quality.

Wolf emphasises that ZOEs’ competition lies in changing how society views nutrition. “We’re competing with an outdated worldview, where people think food is just calories, or that you shouldn’t eat high-fat foods because it’s bad for you,” he explains. This reflects the company’s larger ambition to reshape public understanding of nutrition and challenge misconceptions around diet and health.

One of ZOE’s standout achievements was its role during the COVID-19 pandemic. While initially positioned to launch its personalised nutrition product, the company pivoted to create the ZOE COVID Study (now ZOE Health Study), an app which provided data and insights during the pandemic. “It was scary,” admits Wolf. “We were asking the board to spend money on something completely unplanned, but this was about trying to do something good, and amazingly, they were very supportive,” Wolf says that creating the COVID Study had a positive impact on ZOE in the UK, increasing the public’s awareness of the company, with 4.82m people contributing to the study to date.

Wolf’s leadership at ZOE builds on his previous experience at Criteo, where he helped the startup scale internationally and eventually go public. Wolf admits that leading ZOE down a similar path to an exit does not motivate him. “I’ve been through the journey,” he says. “Exit makes it sound like the end of a story. We want to make sure we’re successful enough to deliver on our mission: to improve the health of millions around the world, while also providing liquidity to our investors and early employees.”

ZOE is well-positioned to lead the shift towards more personalised, data-driven health solutions. The company now has over 100k members and has recently had the results of its randomised control trial published in Nature Medicine, which proved the programme's effectiveness. Wolf remains optimistic about the future of the business and the sector: “I think we’re genuinely trying to build something that can be long-term. It’s a new idea, but in a decade's time, I hope there will be a lot more businesses like this, using tech and science with a mission of improving health.”