OpenEvidence promises 'medical super-intelligence'

It will be hard for OpenEvidence to top its 2025. The company announced nearly $500 million in funding last year and seemingly overnight became a go-to tool in the medical profession. A slide during the company's Monday JPM presentation claims that queries to the company's clinical evidence chatbot grew from 2.6 million in in 2024 to 17.9 million in December 2025, with well over 100 million queries for the year.

The company also revealed it will be launching "medical super-intelligence." What does that mean? Katie Palmer explains in a new story.

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ChatGPT and Claude get into health-advice biz

In recent days, both Anthropic and OpenAI announced that their consumer chatbots, Claude and ChatGPT, will now facilitate uploading medical records and data from wellness apps so they can provide more personalized answers to health questions. To advance the vision, OpenAI said Monday it was buying a little-known startup called Torch, reportedly for $100 million.

In a new story, Brittany Trang explores both the opportunity and risks posed by a flood of consumers racing to the chatbots with their health questions. While there's promise that the services can increase access to health advice to people who might not otherwise get any, the AI models are not specifically tuned to handle health information and could lead users astray.

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Is Health Tech back?

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Depending how you look at things, health tech investment might be roaring or in a deceptively precarious place.

Digital health companies raised $14.2 billion in 2025, up 35% over the previous year, according to Rock Health's closely watched tally of fundraising. If that sounds to you like the boom times are back following several years of depressing outlooks, consider that the fundraising was quite concentrated. A few leading AI companies like Abridge, OpenEvidence, and Hippocratic AI each raised multiple megarounds over $100 million. Wellness companies, with tailwinds from the Trump administration, are also having a moment: smart ring maker Oura raised $900 million and Function Health scored $300 million. Megadeals accounted for 42% of funding.

But, Rock Health notes, the overall number of deals decreased and 35% of funding rounds were "unlabeled," suggesting they didn't result in increased valuations. And as I reported in the fall, lots of distressed company sales are helping fuel growth in M&A.

AI makes up 46% of health care investment overall, according to a new report from Silicon Valley Bank. In further evidence of a lopsided investment market, the bank observes that 2025 saw more $300-million deals than any other year. These accounted for nearly 40% of total health care deal value.

SVB also raises an eyebrow about the modest reported revenues of some of the best funded health AI companies and suggests there may be other opportunities to make money by selling insights to pharma companies: "If the SaaS and ad-supported business models aren't enough to justify the valuations these companies are commanding, it won't be a surprise to see them tap the value of the data they're already collecting."

A16z raises new fund — so does alum

Andreessen Horowitz a nnounced a new $15 billion fundraise — $700 million of that is said to be for the venture firm's Bio + Health fund. By contrast, a16z' s $9 billion 2022 fundraise at the height of health tech exuberance marked $1.5 billion for Bio + Health.

Andreessen Horowitz is also managing a $500 million Bio Ecosystem Fund launched with Eli Lilly last year. And it recently made big investments, for example in Abridge, through its Growth fund that gets $6.75 billion in the new raise.

At JPM, my colleague Allison DeAngelis caught up with Vijay Pande, who until recently led a16z Bio + Health. He told Allison he's now aiming to raise up to $400 million for his new firm VZVC. Read more here.

JPM roundup

Telehealth giant Teladoc Health announced enhancements to the company's core 24/7 care offering. On stage at JPM, CEO Chuck Divita said the company added 8 million members last year, bringing the total number of people with access to a Teladoc service to 103 million. But all eyes have been on BetterHelp, the company's direct-to-consumer mental health subsidiary that's seen decreasing revenues. Divita revealed that BetterHelp is now covered by insurance for 120 million people, which is seen as a key for driving stability. Divita said that of the 4 million people who start registering for BetterHelp, just 20% sign up, which he attributed to cost. Cost also causes direct-to-consumer users to churn out or use fewer sessions than they otherwise would. Insurance coverage could help address these cost issues. No word on how many people are actually using BetterHelp through insurance.
Omada pre-announced fourth quarter and full year 2025 results that beat investor expectations. The company expects 2025 revenue will settle between $256 million and $258 million, representing over 50% growth from the year before. During the company's presentation tomorrow, I'll be curious about any clues behind that growth as well as more about its plan to prescribe GLP-1s.
Hippocratic AI, the well-funded maker of AI voice agents known for handling phone calls for providers, acquired Grove AI as it charts a course into supporting life sciences clinical research. It also appointed Ahad Wahid as president of life sciences. Grove announced it raised a $5 million seed round a year ago.
Abridge announced a partnership with health information network Availity to streamline prior-authorization workflows.

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