SAN DIEGO – Jake Leach joined Dexcom, Inc. (Nasdaq: DXCM) in 2004, about five years after its founding, and has essentially grown up along with the company.
“We were very focused in the early days on solving problems for people with Type 1 diabetes,” Leach said. “But the technology has improved, we’ve scaled it, manufacturing it now at multiple sites all over the world and serving over three and a half million people, it’s an incredible thing to have been a part of, and the opportunity is just so, so great in front of us to make an impact.”
Leach became the company’s new CEO and president on Jan. 1, succeeding longtime CEO Kevin Sayer after Sayer’s 11 years leading the glucose monitoring technology giant.
Dexcom announced in mid-2025 that Sayer would step down as chief executive at the end of the year while remaining the executive chairman of the board of directors. Leach previously served as COO since 2022 and also received the title of president in 2025.
“We planned it out for quite a while, and certainly, being so familiar with the company and the technology, I have that foundation to build on as I stepped into the new role,” Leach said. “But it is definitely a different job; it’s thrilling in terms of being the one that can help really guide the organization, and being the one that thinks about the future.”
Expanding Patient Base
Leach takes over the company at a time when Dexcom saw a record number of new patients in 2025, driven largely by growth among people who may benefit from continuous glucose monitoring but don’t require insulin, such as those with Type 2 diabetes.
Dexcom added roughly 6 million people in the U.S. alone who don’t take insulin but now have access to continuous glucose management through the company’s technologies like Stelo, the first over-the-counter glucose biosensor approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA gave its blessing for Stelo in late 2024 for adults who don’t use insulin and more than 500,000 people have tried using Stelo since its launch. According to Leach, roughly 25 million people in the U.S. fit into that category, including those with prediabetes.
“I’m really looking forward to being able to publish some of our real-world evidence when it comes to prediabetes, because we are seeing that when someone wears a CGM, they start making the changes they need to better control their glucose readings,” he said. “And then, ultimately, we’ve had tons of stories of users and data to show that they reverse their prediabetes using this product.”
‘Good Wins’ in 2025
Dexcom reported that it brought in $4.662 billion in preliminary, unaudited revenue in fiscal year 2025, an increase of 16% over the prior year. The company also projected that it would surpass $5 billion in 2026 for the first time, with a guidance range of $5.16 billion to $5.25 billion, a projected growth rate of between 11 and 13%.
“We’ve had some good wins in ‘25 and we’re expecting some more in ‘26 for coverage around the world,” Leach said. “The U.S. is the largest market for us right now because of the coverage, but over time, the international markets are going to become more and more important, and that is one of the things that I’ve got the organization focused on.”
Dexcom experienced much of its growth, and its transformation into a multi-billion-dollar company, under Sayer. The company also achieved many firsts under his leadership including the glucose monitoring industry’s first approval of a monitoring device without a prescription and the first approval to send glucose data directly to a smartphone.
The company is now one of the largest players in a global metabolic health market that includes more than 600 people with diabetes and an additional 600 million with prediabetes, all of whom could be served by glucose management technology.
“I think when we first started, we didn’t quite understand just how big the opportunity was,” Leach said. “But as time has gone by, the technology has gotten better and frankly, unfortunately, diabetes continues to grow, we see that we can really have an impact.”
Leach was the company’s senior vice president for research and development when Sayer became CEO and was part of Dexcom’s C-suite for much of Sayer’s tenure, serving as the company’s Chief Technology Officer from 2018 to 2022 before being elevated to COO.
Over that time, he said, Sayer’s primary focus was how to best serve Dexcom’s customers and continuously improving and innovating technologically to do so.
“It is a unique situation where we have such remarkable technology and such a huge growing end market,” Leach said. “So I’m humbled and honored to be the one that gets to lead this company forward into something like that.”
DexCom, Inc.
FOUNDED: 999
CEO: Jake Leach
HEADQUARTERS: San Diego
BUSINESS: Glucose monitoring equipment
EMPLOYEES: Over 11,000
REVENUE: $4.662 billion (FY25, preliminary and unaudited)
STOCK: DXCM (Nasdaq)
WEBSITE: https://www.dexcom.com/en-us
CONTACT: [email protected]
SOCIAL IMPACT: Dexcom’s glucose monitoring technology is used by some 2.8 million people worldwide
NOTABLE: Former Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer received the San Diego Business Journal’s CEO of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025.
Eli is an award-winning reporter primarily covering the tech and life sciences industries. He previously worked as the San Diego City Hall reporter for the regional wire City News Service. He has also covered public health, transportation and state and local politics in the San Francisco Bay Area for Local News Matters, the nonprofit arm of the regional wire Bay City News Service, where he also oversaw the development and daily content management of the outlet’s public health and COVID-19 news and resource webpage. He is also a contributing writer covering Minor League Baseball for the analysis and commentary website Baseball Prospectus. Eli is a graduate of San Francisco State University and a native of Northern California.
