Here’s What Happened To Cabinet Health After Shark Tank

If you wince at tossing plastic bottles into the garbage, you’ll appreciate the philosophy behind Cabinet Health: Reduce single-use plastic medical garbage (and plastic consumption health hazards) through innovative packaging. 

In an episode of “Shark Tank” Season 14, founders Achal Patel and Russell Gong explained that Cabinet Health was a much-needed pharmaceutical industry game-changer. As Gong later noted in a 2024 Forbes article, “Plastic waste is a healthcare problem, therefore the healthcare industry needs to play a role in solving it.” He added that people consume up to a credit card-sized amount of microplastics weekly. What was Cabinet Health’s answer to this dilemma? Give people the choice to receive their medications in compostable pouches. They could then transfer the medications to recyclable glass containers. (Read about whether plastic food containers are really safe.)

Patel and Gong initially offered 2.5% equity in exchange for $500,000; initially, no one bit. After further back-and-forth, they enticed Kevin O’Leary and Tony Xu to join them, exchanging 7% equity and 2% royalty for $500,000. But did snagging shark investors help Cabinet Health make a dent in the unintended health and environmental consequences of treating medical microplastics as ordinary waste? In some ways, yes; Cabinet was named a Time 2024 Best Invention. That said, it’s unclear if Cabinet Health (aka Cabinet) is ready to fully launch into the prescription marketplace.

According to the Cabinet product page, the company has arranged for a proprietary line of branded generic pain relief, allergy, and other over-the-counter medications to be available at both Target and Amazon, two of the most popular brick-and-mortar and online shopping venues in the United States.

Beyond that partnership, it’s a little harder to tell if Cabinet has been able to breach into the prescribed pharmaceuticals ecosystem. The company’s collection of medicines seems to be limited to options available without a healthcare provider’s order. However, the official Cabinet FAQ page makes mention of removing the “prescription label” before composting their pouches.

This is where the waters get cloudy. According to a 2023 Business Wire news release, Cabinet Health RX — a prescription solution using Cabinet products — was headed for a debut. But by 2025, the release’s URL links to prescription “transfer requests,” and Cabinet Care Professionals no longer exist.

However, this doesn’t mean that there’s no planning in place for people to be able to get their prescriptions in a more eco-friendly form. Healthcare corporation McKesson is working with Powered by Cabinet (a Cabinet B2B offshoot) to fulfill the mission of its sustainable “Foster & Thrive” sustainable initiatives. With the help of Powered by Cabinet, McKesson is introducing a lineup of low-plastic, recyclable aluminum bottles to the single-use, over-the-counter pharmaceutical world.

With that said, Cabinet hasn’t moved on since its Shark Tank slam-dunk without encountering controversy. In January 2025, several Cabinet products were recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission because their lids did not offer childproof protection and therefore posed a potential poisoning risk. CVS has included recall information on its website, although its site doesn’t appear to advertise Cabinet products. (CVS once sold Cabinet items in 700 of its locations and offered Cabinet prescription services, per Drug Store News.)

To its credit, Cabinet followed up by alerting the public and issuing a voluntary recall, since many people aren’t sure what to do when a medication is recalled. Cabinet has offered a simple way for customers to easily exchange their affected container lids for replacements that offer more protection against accidental ingestion by kids.