OpenEvidence Doubles Valuation to $12bn as Physician Adoption Accelerates

OpenEvidence, the Miami-based startup often described as the “ChatGPT for doctors,” has closed a $250 million funding round valuing the company at $12 billion. The round was led by Thrive Capital and DST, marking another sharp step up in valuation for a company that was valued at $1 billion just a year ago.

Founded in 2022 by Daniel Nadler, previously the co-founder of Kensho Technologies, and AI researcher Zachary Ziegler, OpenEvidence provides an AI-powered clinical chatbot designed specifically for physicians. Unlike general-purpose models, the system is trained on data from leading scientific journals rather than the open internet, a distinction Nadler says is critical for clinical reliability.

“‘ChatGPT for doctors’ is a useful shorthand, but what we really do is help physicians make high-stakes clinical decisions at the point of care,” Nadler told CNBC. “It’s not trained on the open internet or social media, which can introduce low-quality medical information.”

The company’s growth has been unusually rapid. Since February, OpenEvidence has raised roughly $700 million from investors including Sequoia, Google’s venture arm, Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, Craft Ventures and the Mayo Clinic. Nadler claims the platform is now used by more than 40% of physicians in the U.S. and surpassed $100 million in annualized revenue last year.

Nadler frames the opportunity in macro terms, pointing to healthcare’s scale within the U.S. economy. “Health care is the largest segment of the real economy,” he said. “People realize there could be a lot of winners in the space.”

Competition is intensifying. OpenAI recently launched “ChatGPT Health,” while Anthropic is rolling out “Claude Healthcare,” both HIPAA-compliant versions of their consumer tools. Nadler argues OpenEvidence’s edge lies in its early focus on physicians and its growing corpus of real-world usage data. “We’ve already gathered hundreds of millions of real-world clinical consultations from verified physicians — that feedback loop is incredibly hard to replicate,” he said.

Notably, OpenEvidence relies primarily on advertising rather than subscriptions, a model Nadler believes lowers barriers for clinicians in small practices. “Most health care in America isn’t happening at billion-dollar hospitals,” he said. “It’s happening in small practices that don’t have IT departments or budgets for expensive software.”

While acquisition interest is rising across AI healthcare, Nadler remains focused on independence. “I’ve done the acquisition route before,” he said. “This time, I want to build something that compounds over many years.”

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