‘ChatGPT for Doctors’ Startup OpenEvidence Secures $12B Valuation

OpenEvidence, the Miami-based AI platform that has quickly become the digital right hand for nearly half of American physicians, announced on Wednesday that it has closed a massive $250 million Series D funding round. 

This latest injection of cash, co-led by Thrive Capital and DST Global, has doubled the company’s valuation from $6 billion to $12 billion in just three months.

The startup’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. Since its first outside capital raise less than a year ago, OpenEvidence has raised roughly $700 million from a “who’s who” of Silicon Valley and healthcare, including Nvidia, Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and the Mayo Clinic.

Why doctors are ditching Google

While general AI tools sometimes hallucinate or pull “facts” from questionable corners of the internet, OpenEvidence has built its reputation on being a “brain extender” that only reads the good stuff.

The platform is trained exclusively on peer-reviewed medical journals and high-level clinical data, through partnerships with heavyweights like the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Medical Association.

Founder and CEO Daniel Nadler, a 42-year-old billionaire, poet, and tech veteran, explained to CNBC that the popular nickname for his company doesn’t tell the whole story:

“‘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 said. “It’s not trained on the open internet or social media, which can introduce low-quality medical information.”

The numbers suggest that the tool isn’t just a novelty; it’s becoming a necessity. Today, over 40% of US physicians use the platform across more than 10,000 hospitals. In December alone, the AI supported 18 million clinical consultations.

The problem it solves is simple: time.

“If a doctor tried to stay current by reading only the new evidence in the top 10 medical journals and only the most recent changes to their specialty guidelines, it would take nine hours of their day, each day. Without a technology like OpenEvidence, doctors may miss critical new findings or guidelines simply because they lack the time to find them,” Nadler said in a release.

The ad-supported advantage

Unlike many AI companies that demand expensive subscriptions, OpenEvidence is free for doctors.

The company reached $100 million in annual revenue last year by using an advertising model. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies pay for short video ads that appear based on what doctors are searching for.

Nadler, who sold his previous AI firm Kensho Technologies for $700 million in 2018, is now worth an estimated $7.6 billion following this latest round. Despite the high stakes, he isn’t rushing to go public just yet. He told CNBC that bigger fish like OpenAI and SpaceX should lead the way to the stock market first.

“There’s an order to nature,” Nadler told CNBC. “Foundation model companies go public first. Then the application layer follows. That’s how the internet played out, and that’s how this cycle will play out, too.”

While tech giants like OpenAI and Anthropic have recently launched their own medical-grade extensions — ChatGPT Health and Claude for Healthcare — OpenEvidence claims its massive “feedback loop” of hundreds of millions of real-world consultations gives it a “moat” that is nearly impossible to copy.

Also read: Debates over ethical AI in healthcare are intensifying as tools like OpenEvidence spread through daily clinical workflows.