Your Editor is feeling a little whipsawed this usually quiet pre-Easter and Passover week. We opened with 30,000 Oracle employees losing their jobs. Yet even if Oracle can’t get it, there’s plenty of money out there that’s looking for an investment home. Some rounds are huge–if it’s AI or GLP-1, you can bet on BIG–but most fundings for startups and early stage companies are modest in a pre-2019 way. The money that’s out there lines up for ‘sure things’.
OpenAI had no problem raising $122 billion as it moves to conquer the AI World (and maybe the Universe) via ChatGPT. Considering their claim that they are generating $2 billion in revenue per month, just replace the millions raised in the earlier digital age with billions. There’s a laundry list of investors including institutions, individual investors via banks, plus exchange-traded funds managed by ARK Invest. The anchor investors are strategic partners Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank, with continued participation from Microsoft. SoftBank co-led the round alongside a16z, D. E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. The release notes leadership in consumer AI and growth in enterprise AI; as noted here, in January OpenAI debuted ChatGPT for Healthcare (enterprise) and put into test ChatGPT for Health (consumer).
At a ‘virtual VC conference’ earlier this week, one investor panelist estimated that 14% of venture capital funding in 2025 went to exactly two companies, OpenAI and Anthropic (Claude). That disproportion rings alarm bells to this Editor, who well remembers the ludicrous dot-com boom/bust, and even earlier the insane financing that went into (mostly failed) airlines during deregulation–including the airline she worked for.
Another healthcare segment that hasn’t had much problem raising funds is e-prescribing of GLP-1 drugs. Miami-based eMed raised $200 million in its Series A, bringing its valuation to over $2 billion. Fronted by NFL quarterback legend Tom Brady, recently named founding chief wellness officer who is also an investor, the round was led by earlier investor AON Consulting with the addition of a starry roster of individual investors noted in their brief release. eMed’s eRx is marketed both to individuals and employers; the fresh funding will support further development of its agentic AI platform plus a new capitated model “designed to help employers bend the healthcare cost curve”. This Editor notes the lede in most articles about eMed is Brady and the $2 billion valuation; as our Readers know, the latter is a subjective and oft-inflated estimate of market value especially at this early stage. TTA dug into eMed and some of the company’s interesting history, crossing over into Ali Parsa and Babylon Health, here. Reuters, FierceHealthcare, Mobihealthnews
Moving back into reality, Avo, a NYC-based clinical AI information platform, raised a $10 million Series A. Avo’s calling card is bringing together EHR, revenue cycle including payer, patient data, and knowledge bases to streamline use at the point of care. Funders were led by Noro-Moseley Partners, with participation from existing investors AlleyCorp, Las Olas Venture Capital, MedMountain Ventures, Epsilon Health, and new investor Scrub Capital. Avo has a solid roster of customers that include Geisinger, Mass General Brigham, and local providers such as Englewood (NJ) Health. They also have an intriguing feature: an ambient listening copilot that references patient data and generates documentation that improves revenue cycle. Release
Stedi’s Series C is typical in this hard-raise market in both level and number of investors, with a bit of a twist. The $50 million raised brings their total to $142 million, and will be used to expand its product presence and scale infrastructure. Denver-based Stedi’s calling card is an API-first and cloud-native financial clearinghouse that in revenue cycle management sits between healthcare providers and payers (insurers) to process essential transactions like eligibility checks, claims, and electronic payments. The funding was led by by Addition, with participation from Stripe, Ribbit Capital, USV, First Round, BoxGroup, and Bloomberg Beta. There was also a group of angel investors who jumped in, including Tobi Lütke (CEO of Shopify), Guillermo Rauch (CEO of Vercel), and Karim Atiyeh (CTO of Ramp). Finsmes
Since we opened with Oracle, we’ll close with them. Five days before 30,000 employees globally were declared unnecessary, Oracle announced that they leased additional space in Nashville, specifically 116,000 square feet within The Neuhoff District at 1320 Adams Street. Oracle now has 2,000 “seats” across three Nashville locations. The release touts “teams focused on a wide variety of roles, including sales and marketing, cloud engineering, software development, and product management. The company is actively recruiting ambitious thinkers and leaders eager to shape the next generation of cloud infrastructure and AI innovation. ” Perhaps some of those hundreds of folks in KC and other locations can be rehired in Nashville (sic).
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