OAKLAND, Calif. — In a rare partnership, heavyweight tech venture firms General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz are co-leading a $50 million seed round aimed at exploring large language models in health care — a high-profile bet that there’s money to be made commercializing the artificial intelligence technology for health systems.
The funding will be used as a springboard for a startup called Hippocratic AI, which aims to develop and test the technology’s potential for alleviating health care worker shortages and burnout. Founders Munjal Shah and Meenesh Bhimani said it could one day offer services like genetic counseling or nutritional coaching — or even eventually guide diagnoses, if it’s proven to be safe and accurate.
Founders Shah and Bhimani began working on the concept in January as the public became aware of these models. “Us and the rest of the world woke up about the same time,” Shah said. “What would happen if we just had an infinite supply of health care workers…what if we gave every person in the country a free dietitian?”
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