OpenAI Acquires Health Tech Startup Torch for $100M
▼ Summary
– OpenAI has acquired the small startup Torch, with an unnamed source reporting the price as $100 million in equity.
– Torch was developing an app to consolidate a person’s medical data from various sources into a unified “medical memory” for AI.
– The four-person Torch team, who previously worked together at Forward Health, is joining OpenAI as part of the deal.
– Forward Health, known for its AI-powered clinics, shut down abruptly in late 2024 after raising significant funding.
– The Torch technology and team will be integrated into OpenAI’s newly announced service, ChatGPT Health.
OpenAI has made a significant strategic move by acquiring the health technology startup Torch, a deal reportedly valued at approximately $100 million in equity. This acquisition brings Torch’s four-person team and its specialized technology directly into OpenAI’s operations. The move is seen as a key step in bolstering OpenAI’s recently announced ChatGPT Health service, which aims to provide users with tools for analyzing and managing personal health information through its conversational AI platform.
Torch was developing an application designed to consolidate an individual’s fragmented medical data from numerous sources. This includes information from doctor’s appointments, laboratory test results, wearable device outputs, and various patient portals, even incorporating data from consumer wellness tests. The startup described its core innovation as “a medical memory for AI,” a system that unifies scattered health records into what they termed a context engine. This technology is intended to create a comprehensive, AI-accessible profile of a person’s health history.
The founding team behind Torch originally collaborated at Forward Health, a company known for operating AI-enhanced primary care clinics. Forward Health, which had raised more than $400 million in funding, ceased operations unexpectedly towards the end of 2024. Torch co-founder Ilya Abyzov noted this shared professional history in a social media post. The acquisition by OpenAI represents a new and promising direction for the Torch team, shifting their work from an independent venture to an integral part of a major AI organization’s health initiative.
This transaction is structured as an “acqui-hire,” a common practice in the tech industry where a company is purchased primarily to onboard its talented personnel and their intellectual property. Rather than allowing the technology to fade after Forward’s closure, the team and its “medical memory” concept will now be developed within OpenAI’s ecosystem. The integration is expected to directly enhance the capabilities of ChatGPT Health, providing the service with a sophisticated framework for organizing and interpreting complex, multi-source health data for users seeking AI-powered health insights.
(Source: TechCrunch)
