Hippocratic AI Takes on Patient-Facing Healthcare with $141M Raise And Now A Unicorn

The healthcare industry has long struggled with a systemic staffing crisis, one exacerbated by the global demand for care that outpaces available resources. Rising costs, workforce shortages, and an aging population have placed immense strain on the system, with solutions often lagging behind. Yet, AI-driven innovation is emerging to bridge the gap. Leading this charge is Hippocratic AI, a startup developing a large language model (LLM) tailored to healthcare use cases.

In just 18 months, the company has achieved what many could only dream of, combining cutting-edge generative AI with clinician-driven innovation. With its recent $141 million Series B funding round—led by Kleiner Perkins, alongside General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, and other prominent investors—the startup’s valuation soared to $1.64 billion, earning it coveted “unicorn” status.

Tackling the Workforce Shortage

Hippocratic AI’s mission is clear: address the shortage of nurses, social workers, and other healthcare professionals worldwide. Its generative AI agents, built to handle low-risk, non-diagnostic, patient-facing tasks, provide much-needed support to healthcare organizations. These agents can manage chronic care, post-discharge follow-ups, and even patient education. For example, during recent hurricanes in Florida and wildfires in California, Hippocratic’s AI agents contacted patients to assess care continuity needs.

CEO Munjal Shah, a serial entrepreneur, founded the company alongside physicians, hospital administrators, and AI researchers from prestigious institutions like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Google. Their shared vision was to amplify the capacity of healthcare systems by creating AI that not only aids but complements human clinicians.

“We’re creating an abundance of healthcare services that were previously unimaginable,” Shah explained, noting the company’s ability to expand care reach by tenfold or more.

Since launching out of stealth in May 2023, Hippocratic AI has experienced rapid growth, raising a total of $278 million, including a $53 million Series A and a $17 million follow-on investment from NVIDIA in early 2024. The company rolled out its first generative AI-based task-specific agent and introduced its Polaris 2.0 architecture, expanding its product offerings. Hippocratic AI also secured contracts with 23 healthcare organizations, such as OhioHealth, Honor Health, and WellSpan Health, with 16 clients going live in less than a year. In terms of patient impact, the company has facilitated over 200,000 patient interactions, achieving an impressive average satisfaction score of 8.7 out of 10.

Shah emphasized that these milestones have been pivotal in building investor confidence. “Can you build a safe product? Check. Will people buy it? Check. Will patients like it? Check,” he said.

Clinician-Led AI Innovation

A standout feature of Hippocratic AI is its AI agent app store, which empowers clinicians to design, test, and monetize AI agents tailored to specific needs. From postpartum mental health screening to extreme heat wave preparation, over 300 agents spanning 25 specialties have already been developed.

For healthcare professionals like Kristina Dulaney, RN, who created an agent for postpartum care, this platform is transformative. “There’s no way the healthcare system can reach every new mom and family effectively. AI offers the scale to change that,” she said.

The app store also ensures that clinicians receive revenue from their contributions, with creators earning a percentage of fees generated by their agents.

Healthcare AI faces understandable scrutiny, particularly for patient-facing tasks. Hippocratic AI mitigates these concerns with a rigorous three-step safety testing process. The company’s innovative architecture leverages a multi-LLM constellation system, where 19 models supervise the main agent to minimize risks like hallucination. Additionally, more than 7,000 licensed nurses and physicians participated in real-world testing, conducting over 260,000 simulated patient interactions to refine the technology. Hippocratic AI also ensures ongoing safety through continuous monitoring, with regular reviews of live calls to maintain high standards of quality and safety.

Shah described the company’s approach as a paradigm shift. “Safety is our top priority. We didn’t release this product until it matched the safety level of a human clinician,” he asserted.

Hippocratic AI is changing healthcare staffing by offering a marketplace where health systems, payers, and other providers can “hire” generative AI agents to handle non-diagnostic, patient-facing tasks. These AI-driven agents address the pressing shortage of healthcare professionals, including nurses, social workers, and nutritionists, by supporting functions like chronic care management and post-discharge follow-ups for conditions such as congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Safety is a core focus for the company, with CEO Shah emphasizing that the goal from day one has been to ensure the AI agents match the safety standards of human clinicians. “We’ve been very deliberate and focused on safety. I promised we wouldn’t release this product until it’s as safe as a human clinician,” Shah shared in an exclusive interview with Fierce Healthcare.

To achieve this, Hippocratic AI takes a meticulous, phased approach to agent development. Only licensed clinicians can create and test the AI agents, and their credentials are rigorously verified. The agents undergo multiple rounds of testing, starting with clinician evaluations by a network of over 6,000 nurses and 300 doctors. Only after passing these assessments are the agents certified and ready for use in patient care.

With fresh funding in hand, Hippocratic AI is expanding beyond U.S. borders to regions like Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Additionally, the startup is exploring new verticals such as pharmaceutical clinical trial coordination and wellness coaching.

Investors like Mamoon Hamid of Kleiner Perkins see immense potential. “Hippocratic has achieved incredible traction in record time. From building an LLM to partnering with health systems and delivering real-world impact, it’s a rare success story,” Hamid said, estimating that AI for healthcare staffing could outsize the entire healthcare software market.

Hippocratic AI isn’t just automating tasks. By enabling long-term vigilance for chronic conditions and providing tools for clinicians to innovate, the company is trying to bring out the best with AI. “We’re one of the few people that really said, ‘Hey, let’s try to attack patient-facing activities’ We know it’s harder, we know you have a higher threshold of safety, but we think there’s a bigger impact you can make in healthcare if you do that,” Shah said.

As Shah puts it, “This is more than solving today’s staffing problems. It’s about amplifying the care we can deliver and building a healthcare system that finally matches our technological potential.”