Hippocratic AI has launched with a significant $50 million seed investment from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz, marking one of the largest early-stage funding rounds by a16z in healthcare. The startup, founded by a multidisciplinary team of physicians, hospital administrators, Medicare professionals, and AI researchers, is developing a healthcare-specific large language model (LLM) aimed at non-diagnostic, patient-facing applications. The funding will primarily support GPU resources for training, acquisition of pre-training content, and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) provided by medical professionals, according to CEO Munjal Shah.
The launch of Hippocratic AI reflects a broader trend of tech companies racing to innovate in the healthcare AI space. Industry leaders like Google, Microsoft’s Nuance, and Doximity have introduced GPT-based models for applications such as AI-powered medical assistants and healthcare-specific tools. These advancements signal a shift toward integrating LLMs into clinical workflows to enhance efficiency and patient engagement. While the technology holds transformative potential, experts like Nuance CTO Joe Petro emphasize that many groundbreaking ideas in clinical AI have yet to be realized, suggesting significant growth opportunities in the sector.