Abridge's Valuation Soars to $5.3B as AI Revolutionizes Medical Documentation

In just 4 months, AI medical scribe Abridge doubles valuation to $5.3B

Abridge, an AI startup automating medical notes, has secured a $300 million Series E at a $5.3 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The round, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Khosla Ventures, follows the company's $250 million February fundraise at a $2.75 billion valuation. The seven-year-old Abridge is widely considered to be the leader in the increasingly crowded AI-powered medical scribe market, largely due to its early entry and integration with Epic Systems, the dominant health record software. In Q1, Abridge has reached $117 million in contracted annual recurring revenue (a metric that includes all signed recurring contacts, including from customers that have still not been onboarded,) The Information reported last month. Along with the fundraise, Abridge announced that it is expanding into converting medical notes from patient appointments into AI-powered medical codes, an offering that makes the company directly competitive with startups like CodaMetrix and a feature from its partner Epic Systems. Abridge, which was founded by cardiologist Shiv Rao, claims that its AI scribe technology is used by over 150 of the largest health systems in the US.

Healthcare startup Abridge raises $300 million, led by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz

June 24 (Reuters) - Healthcare firm Abridge, which uses artificial intelligence to build medical documents, has raised $300 million in a funding round, it said on Tuesday. The funding round was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Khosla Ventures. Founded in 2018, Pittsburgh-based Abridge automates clinical notes and medical conversations for doctors using artificial intelligence. The latest fundraise comes after the firm raised $250 million earlier this year. Reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals

AI Note-Taking Startup Abridge Raises $300M As Tech To Reduce Physician Burnout Gains Traction

Several well-funded startups have emerged to try to reduce the doctor burnout associated with note-taking and other administrative duties. "We've seen healthcare take up generative AI-centered solutions faster than any other industry," Abridge CEO and co-founder Dr. Shiv Rao told the Journal. His startup's technology works by using ambient-listening technology to tune into conversations between doctors and patients and automatically transcribe notes, reducing the after-hours time physicians spend on administrative tasks. Along with Abridge -- which has now raised $757.5 million total from investors, per Crunchbase -- other well-funded startups in the AI healthcare documentation space include: Overall, funding to startups at the intersection of AI and healthcare hit $7.5 billion in 2024. This year is on pace to top that, with $5.6 billion invested through late June, per Crunchbase data. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading:

Medical AI startup Abridge closes $300M investment at $5.3B valuation - SiliconANGLE

Medical AI startup Abridge closes $300M investment at $5.3B valuation Medical software developer Abridge Inc. today disclosed that it has raised a $300 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The investment, which also included the participation of Khosla Ventures, values the startup at $5.3 billion. That's nearly double what it was worth following its previous funding round in February. The milestone follows a quarter in which Abridge's annualized recurring revenue reportedly reached $117 million. Medical professionals spend a significant amount of time writing down patient information gleaned during doctor's visits. Abridge develops an artificial intelligence platform, the Contextual Reasoning Engine, that automates the task. It can record a patient conversation, transcribe it and automatically turn the key details into a medical note. Abridge adapts AI-generated notes to user requirements. According to the company, its platform can customize outputted text based on physician preferences or a healthcare system's internal guidelines. The Contextual Reasoning Engine can optionally enrich the text with data from earlier medical notes. Abridge also promises to automate several related tasks. One of them is the process of drafting medical orders, documents in which a physician provides instructions on how to carry out a treatment plan. The platform automatically syncs such documents to the EHR, or electronic health record, system in which a hospital keeps clinical information. To ease data management, healthcare organizations turn information from files such as medical notes into ICD-10 codes. Those are short sequences of numbers and characters that each describe a different medical condition, symptom or related detail. ICD-10 codes' standardized format simplifies tasks such as data analysis. Abridge can also generate medical billing codes, which serve a similar function as ICD-10 codes. Both data structures condense clinical information into a concise format optimized for ease of management. The difference is that medical billing codes are primarily used for accounting purposes. Abridge says that it has developed multiple internal workflows designed to avoid AI errors. Before updating its platform, the company tests the quality of the new version's output with a group of medical professionals. It then conducts a larger-scale trial that involves early adopters "trained to be especially vigilant" about the quality of medical notes. "Every medical conversation is rich with the signals our healthcare system depends on," said Abridge co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Shiv Rao. "Abridge activates those signals in the background, silently handling the complexity so clinicians can focus on the human moments that matter."

Healthcare startup Abridge tops $5 billion valuation

The latest funding round, aimed at improving revenue cycles and bridging the gap between clinicians and billing teams, was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz - also known as A16z - with participation from Khosla Ventures.Healthcare firm Abridge, which uses artificial intelligence to build medical documents, has raised $300 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, it said on Tuesday. The latest funding round, aimed at improving revenue cycles and bridging the gap between clinicians and billing teams, was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz - also known as A16z - with participation from Khosla Ventures. Startups that leverage AI have received ample interest from venture capital firms since last year, with large-scale funding rounds and steep valuations driving an otherwise muted private market. Search startup Glean was valued at $7.2 billion in a $150 million financing round earlier in this month, led by asset manager Wellington Management. Andreessen Horowitz has made big bets on AI and seeks to raise $20 billion, the largest fundraise in its history, to capitalize on global investor interest in U.S. artificial intelligence companies. Founded in 2018, Pittsburgh-based Abridge automates clinical notes and medical conversations for doctors using AI. "While the healthcare system has evolved over the last 30 years, the one constant has been rising costs and the growing burden on clinicians and patients alike," said David George, general partner at A16z, adding that Abridge addresses these particular issues. Abridge also said it is partnering with over 150 enterprise health systems across the U.S. The latest fundraise comes after Abridge raised $250 million earlier this year, co-led by investor Elad Gil, known for his bets in fintech firm Stripe and venture capital firm IVP. The firm was valued at $850 million after a funding round last year where it raised $150 million. It also announced the expansion of its platform last week to farther inpatient care and streamline outpatient orders.

Abridge Raises $300 Million for AI Medical Note-Taking Tech | PYMNTS.com

The funding values Abridge at $5.3 billion and will help the company develop its tool that uses AI to automate doctors' note-taking, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (June 24). Abridge Co-founder and CEO Dr. Shiv Rao told the WSJ that the new capital will help the company hire scientists, machine-learning experts and software developers focused on building products and advanced AI infrastructure to support large customers. The WSJ notes that this funding is happening at a time when what's known as "ambient listening" technology, which tunes in to the conversations between doctor and patient and then transcribes them, is becoming more popular with hospitals and health systems. This tech, the report adds, has been praised for alleviating burnout among doctors, letting them devote more time to their patients and less time having to transcribe their notes after hours. The company's technology is now used in over 150 large health systems around the country and will support more than 50 million medical conversations this year, the report added. It's a big leap from a few years ago when the firm was piloting its technology with a handful of hospitals, said Rao. "Since then, we've seen healthcare take up generative AI-centered solutions faster than any other industry," he said. In other news from the intersection of AI and healthcare, PYMNTS recently explored the promise the technology could hold in clinical research through the use of digital twins. "Drug development has traditionally been an industry defined by high costs, slow timelines and steep failure rates," that report said. "Today, that reality is changing. With an explosion of interest in generative AI and computational medicine, digital twins are no longer theoretical." It's a tool being increasingly employed by pharmaceutical sponsors to streamline trials, particularly in high-need areas like neuroscience, due to their potential to shorten trial durations, lessen the reliance on placebo groups and get life-saving drugs to market faster. "We're not just tweaking the system," Jon Walsh, founder and chief scientific officer at Unlearn, said during a discussion hosted by PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. "We're re-architecting it." Digital twin technology, Walsh argued, can help level the healthcare playing field. "Not all doctors have access to all of the tools and not all doctors have the same capabilities," Webster noted during the conversation. "This is as much a technical problem as it is a social one," Walsh said. "Better infrastructure, better use of medical records, better education for doctors. It's very dangerous to build tools that doctors can't understand and can't trust."