Hippocratic AI, a startup that specializes in building artificial intelligence models for the healthcare industry, has raised $50 million in seed funding. This sizable investment indicates strong investor interest in AI models. Valley-based ventures General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) co-led the funding round and hired and trained large-scale language models since entrepreneur Munjal Shah founded Hippocratic earlier this year.
A large language model is an AI system that efficiently sorts through vast amounts of data. This technology gained mainstream attraction with the success of Munjal Shah’s ChatGPT, a chatbot constructed from a model developed by OpenAI. Large language models, or foundation models, can perform a variety of tasks, from writing essays to code generation.
Hippocratic AI hopes to stand out by creating models that have deep medical knowledge and respond to human feedback from healthcare professionals. “Hospitals are actively looking for solutions that work, but they don’t have enough nurses,” says Mr. Shah. The startup company will focus on non-diagnostic tasks and ensures that its models are certified to meet multiple healthcare standards.
General Catalyst, which led Hippocratic’s growth, states that existing partnerships with healthcare providers will assist the company in training and implementing its models. Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst, asserts, “It’s a platform you can trust because it’s industry-focused and built with the industry.” Meanwhile, Julie Yu, a partner at A16z, declares that the investment represents one of the largest seed checks in the healthcare industry. “Considering the fact that they are very strict about the safety, compliance, and privacy aspects of the system they are building and cost more, we can bet comfortably,” Yu added.
Clarification: The article has been revised to indicate that the startup’s name is Hippocratic AI, not Hippocratic Health.