TTA’s August Ice Cream Run 3: less activity is more for startups, hard looks at Commure and OpenAI, acquisitions by UHS, DocGo, R1–and UK’s Alertacall sold

August 20, 2026 | by

20-24 August 2026

Enjoy the August Doldrums, because this fall might be awfully…eventful. Our Must Reads are rather Doomful, between exposés on General Catalyst and Commure’s business practices, plus OpenAI’s accelerating troubles that look like Sam Altman is flirting hard with the Devil of Demise. A positive Must Read is on early-stage funding–how doing less will get your company more. Our news roundup highlights several acquisitions and Anthropic partnering with EHR PointClickCare. Speaking of sales, UK’s Alertacall has been sold after great success, and will remain independent.

On the hot subject of AI writing and AI Copy Slop, find out how to spot and avoid it in our thoughts on why TTA remains stubbornly 100% Written By Humans. Grab the cuppa for this one. Else you’ll faint like Pepper!

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you! Also check out my personal page on Substack.

This Week’s Must Reads: how lack of focus dooms startup financing, Commure’s Sea of Red Flags Flapping, and what happens if OpenAI expires?

News roundup: UHS-Talkspace $850M buy final, DocGo to buy Hicuity Health for $52M in stock/debt, R1 to buy Humata Health, PointClickCare EHR to integrate Anthropic’s AI

UK’s Alertacall sold to Constellation Software’s Volaris Group

Last week’s headlines

Why Readers can be assured that TTA is 100% Written by Humans (A handy guide to detecting AI Copy Slop)

News potpourri: OpenAI sued for practicing unlicensed medicine”, Cleveland Clinic med drone delivery, Solventum separates out health info systems, Unlimited Technology RCM in 3.8M data breach, Samsung Galaxy Buds FDA cleared for hearing assist

VA moves to secure Oracle for its EHR Modernization through mid-2031 (More reasons beyond the obvious)

Breaking report: Oracle drawing up plans to lay off employees in “double digit percentages” by 1 September (We’re waiting for this shoe to drop)

Recent Headlines and Must Reads

News roundup #2: Function Health’s jumbo $450M raise from General Catalyst, Hinge Health’s $105M Cylinder buy, and Throne Science’s $10M Series A

News roundup #1: AI governance ‘in’ with Feds, ATA; Centene’s shrinking but more profitable future; repositions and partnerships for DispatchHealth, WHOOP; Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand modernization

Chutes & Ladders, Oracle Edition: Surprise! Project Jupiter data center build overages, “social costs” multiply. Pentagon inks $7B, 10 year deal for software.

This week’s Must Read: the dangerous financing of AI data center buildouts–and how they resemble the 2020 health tech boom (Remember the SPAC boom that cracked and left nearly all companies and billions in the dust?)

A gloomy view on Oracle going forward: debt, cash flow, and dependence on OpenAI

 

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This Week’s Must Reads: how lack of focus dooms startup financing, Commure’s Sea of Red Flags Flapping, and what happens if OpenAI expires?

August 19, 2026 | by

Grab a cuppa and sit down with these articles. (You may also want to subscribe to their authors.)

From Substack, UK author Martyn Eeles current Health VC newsletter, “The Strategic Clarity Problem”, advises founders of early-stage companies that doing more can result in less–financing. Too much activity in too many directions leads to confusion on investors’ parts. Paradoxically, it doesn’t enhance “potential” but detracts. It reads to investors, especially now, as lack of priorities and not strategic. Mr. Eeles recommends focus, focus, focus. Choose a strategy and stick with it. It doesn’t mean that a founder cannot show multiple future paths, just that the main path has to carry the company forward. (Sounds like good marketing!)

For instance, how you present your direction is vital in making activity sound focused and strategic. FTA:

A founder who says, “There are many use cases,” may sound ambitious. A founder who says, “There are many possible use cases, but this one is the wedge because it creates the clearest buyer urgency,” sounds more investable.

A founder who says, “We have lots of partnership conversations,” may sound active. A founder who says, “These two partnerships matter because they reduce implementation risk and create access to the customer segment we are prioritising,” sounds strategic.

The short (non-subscriber) version has a wealth of information for both founders and funders, complete with a nifty infographic that depicts nearly the entire article. but truncates at ‘The Choices Investors Want To See”.  This Editor would recommend the annual €60 subscription if you’re in the business. Mr. Eeles is managing partner at Clarma Capital, a European life sciences venture fund.

Our friend Sergei Polevikov writing in his Substack AI Health Uncut returns to the General Catalyst-powered Commure in Commure’s Long History of Red Flags. Even though General Catalyst doesn’t want him to.  Yes, the flags still flap around the gaggle of health tech companies financed by General Catalyst (GC). Commure itself is an agglomeration of GC companies: Athelas, Augmedix, RxHealth, and Memora Health. Commure originally had one marketable product, Strongline, a safety and duress badging/tracking system, three years ago before GC’s consolidation moves. What is questionable about Commure has now surfaced in STAT News +’ investigation (paywalled). From pricing dependent on recommendations to products that don’t work until they’re modified at the client if they eventually do work, to referral programs that are way too close to violating the Anti-Kickback Statute…Commure has it all on the Shady Side of the Street. GC keeps shoveling money in because they can, too. 

And once again, thinking the unthinkable, is Ed Zitron. Here he imagines the demise of OpenAI and reads the tea leaves. He notes:

  • the deceleration of revenue when it needs to accelerate (see below)
  • the COO and CRO left after less than a year on the job, likely walking away from generous stock options/awards–now, who does this?
  • it’s backed away from its IPO and likely will be beaten to it by Anthropic (Claude)
  • the economics are terrifying. OpenAI lost $20.9 billion in 2025 on $13.07 billion in revenue
  • it needs to meet compute obligations and for that needs $800 billion in cash
  • it needs to raise $100-200 billion annually just to survive

In short, it has to become the most successful company since Caesar Crossed The Rubicon–or it croaks. Expires. Meets the Devil of Demise and the Devil wins.

The consequences will be severe. FTA:

To not actively and meaningfully discuss the potential for OpenAI to collapse is actively irresponsible. To act like there are not significant, existential problems with this company’s economics is to intentionally avoid reality, and whoever is on the receiving end of said ignorance deserves better, be they an investor reading your analyst note or a reader burdened with incomplete journalism.

What follows may be an Enron-Lehman Brothers hybrid, one that leaves unbelievable destruction in its wake, an avoidable systemic risk empowered and enabled by a kneecapped media industry and sell-side analysts incapable of seeing further than two quarters in the future.

The time to stop this? Long past.

Zitron backs everything up with hard numbers laced with cross-references. It’s dense and needs close attention. Depending on your view,  you’ll choose a gallon of coffee, a fifth of bourbon, or a bottle of wine. What Happens If OpenAI Dies?

Another argument, shorter, and similar, is made by Gary Marcus in his Substack newsletter (free access), Marcus on AI,  BREAKING: OpenAI’s unraveling has begun.  Again, just as it was scheduled for its IPO and racing its main competitor.

It contains two citations from the Wall Street Journal writers who cover OpenAI, Berber Jin and Corrie Dribusch:

  • “The company grew revenue by just 18% to $6.7 billion from q1 to q2, while its losses sank further into the red”
  • Losses grew from Q1 to Q2 to $3 billion to $12.3 billion, while it added only $1 billion (to $6.7 billion)

Nvidia is in full CYA mode, given its exposure to OpenAI. Can Oracle be far behind?

A gloomy view on Oracle going forward: debt, cash flow, and dependence on OpenAI

July 16, 2026 | by

Oracle is beginning to turn into one of those cautionary case studies. And that’s not good news for healthcare. From their faltering EHR to the hacking of their software, Oracle’s news hasn’t been cheerful. While still profitable in the quarterly reports, the debt load and its obligations in their chosen wrenching changeover from a software developer/seller to an AI infrastructure landlord have been followed by speculation. The latest speculation from June is selling their EHR business [TTA 2 June]–if they can find a buyer. The EHR is a distant second to Epic in every metric [TTA 27 May] and Oracle has an immense obligation to the Federal Government for both the Military Health System (MHS) and VA’s EHR Modernization that won’t complete projected rollout until 2031.

A recent analysis published in Seeking Alpha (may require free account, PDF here) will give one further pause.

The debt load is a crusher. There’s anywhere from $72 to $100 billion in debt on Oracle’s books, and that preceded the PIMCO financing of $16.3 billion that included equity. Their credit rating from major raters is one step above junk: BBB-negative from S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Baa2 Negative outlook. [TTA 7 May] Oracle has already projected it needs more: an additional $40 billion in fiscal 2027 through a mix of debt and equity.

Net debt is soaring. Oracle ended FY 2026 with net debt of $97.6 billion. This represents a ~20% increase versus the $81.4 billion of FY 2025. Looking forward, this analyst is projecting that the net debt by end of FY 2027 will be in the range of ~$120 billion.

There’s another little problem called cash flow. Years of positive free cash flow, even during the pandemic recession, turned sour in their FY 26 to a negative $23.7 billion. The analysis states that Oracle is now heavily dependent on external cash–debt–to finance its AI infrastructure building. S&P also noted that capital expenditure has been geometrically increasing: $6.9 billion (2024), $21.1 billion (2025) and $55.7 billion (2026). The guidance for fiscal 2027? Between $90 and $95 billion. That is over a 70% increase. Cash flow clearly can’t pay down the debt they already have, a fact that banks factored in to cut off the lending spigot.

Its performance obligations are also crushing. $553 billion has been reported for OpenAI alone [TTA 7 May].  This article reports remaining performance obligations of $638 billion, about half of which is for OpenAI. Despite the disparity in numbers (perhaps completed obligations?), in this analyst’s view, something happens to OpenAI–for instance, a pullback in the confidence of markets to finance their aggressive expansion (and, this Editor would add, an IPO)–Oracle would be hit hard. To paraphrase an overworked analogy, if OpenAI stumbles and sprains its ankle, Oracle would break both legs.

But..but…isn’t demand supposed to be increasing, infinitely?  Increased demand is critical to continued financing. Yet there are leading indicators that demand is leveling off. Corporations are increasingly limiting internal use of AI by employees to tamp down soaring token usage costs and control budgets. These companies have also found that AI tools often do not work as well in replacing humans as they were cracked up to be. And now seemingly every software offering is ‘powered by AI’. The newness is wearing off.

The chip cycle is speeding up–not good news for AI infrastructure builders.  Nvidia is now in full production of its Vera Rubin chip, which is dramatically faster than the previous generation Blackwell chip. Our March reporting picked up that Oracle had forward commitments with Nvidia to use the older Blackwell chip for the OpenAI data centers, and OpenAI wasn’t happy about that. It’s not a simple matter of going to Nvidia and returning old chips and getting new ones–that isn’t done. Vera Rubin is also twice as expensive on a per-rack basis than Blackwell–$7.8 million versus $4 million. Add to this the long taffy pull of building (online is 12-18 months minimum), power, water, and labor costs…it adds up, as any builder will tell you.

Given the above factors, it shouldn’t be any surprise that Oracle stock is down 30% since last December and continues to decline.

Extra: The article also contains a short history of financial cycles. There are parallels drawn comparing the AI boom we are in to similar technology-driven boom and bust cycles, dating back to the building of canals in the 1700s, railways in the 1800s, and electrification in the early 1900s.  

Editor’s note: Any analysis of Oracle’s financial health is based on this article, previous articles, multiple sources, and Oracle’s disclosures. Our interest is primarily in the well-being of Oracle Health and the markets it serves. We do not engage in stock picking and none of the above should be construed as financial advice.

Chutes & Ladders: Done Global principals sentenced on Adderall fraud, Oracle E-Biz Suite hacked, OpenAI’s 5% offer to US government, Meta considers cloud AI, Pearl’s $110M raise

July 9, 2026 | by

One big years-long chute for Done Global’s Ruthia He and David Brody. The convicted former founder/CEO and clinical president were sentenced to substantial Federal prison terms this past Tuesday. Ms. He will be facing six years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and a fine of $1 million. Dr. Brody was sentenced to two years imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $1 million. In addition, there will be restitution to fraud victims.

To be announced at a later date: when sentences will start and where they will be served, based on recommendations from the Bureau of Prisons.

While Done Global is effectively ‘done’, the company also does business under the name Mindful Health.

The points of the (at least) $100 million fraud were based on the illegal telehealth prescription of Adderall and other Schedule II stimulants such as Vyvance. Medications on Schedule II have accepted medical uses but carry high potential for abuse and psychological or physical dependence and thus are controlled:

  • A scheme that used the Done Global technology platform, compensation structure, and clinical protocols to unlawfully distribute over 37 million pills of Adderall, defraud insurers of over $12 million, and obstruct the federal investigation that followed.
  • The defendant (He) spent over $40 million on social media advertisements to deceive Americans into believing they had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), falsely diagnosing patients with ADHD, and distributing Adderall, including to patients who the company was warned were suffering from Adderall psychosis, bipolar, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions that were worsened by stimulant prescriptions. 
  • These were designed to boost the Done Global valuation to above $1 billion.

From the detailed Department of Justice press release: “The defendants refused to hire or fired Done clinicians who did not participate in the conspiracy, while paying up to $60,000 per month to clinicians who signed Adderall prescriptions every 30 seconds. The defendants also used an “auto-refill” platform technology feature after an initial diagnosis to minimize follow-up appointments, where prescribers signed prescriptions for Adderall based on an automatically generated message that a patient desired a refill. Because of these policies, some patients went years without seeing clinicians, who continually authorized refills even through involuntary psychiatric holds or after the patients had died.”

Dr. Brody alone personally wrote prescriptions for 394,324 Schedule II stimulant pills prescribed to 6,559 Done members. He never evaluated them nor reviewed a single patient record. Part of the case was Done’s record of misdiagnosis, over-prescribing, and patient death.

Additional charges against Ms. He included diversion of company assets and operations abroad. As indictments neared in 2023/2024, they both deleted records, instructed employees to delete  incriminatory documents and messages from the company servers, and transferred communications to platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal using disappearing message settings to conceal sensitive information.

After completion of her sentence, it is likely that Ms. He will be deported to her home country of China. She attempted to flee to Hong Kong in February 2023 and was forced to surrender her passport. Despite this, she made a second attempt after obtaining Chinese travel documents, then was arrested and detained before trial as a flight risk. Two other factors were that she transferred $4.6 million in ad-related revenue to China and set up a shell company there. 

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), HHS-Office of Inspector General, IRS Criminal Investigations, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) investigated as violations included financial diversion, record falsification, drug prescribing and Medicare/Medicaid fraud. The main DOJ units involved were the National Fraud Enforcement Division and the Health Care Fraud Unit.

The case was heard in the Federal Northern District of California by Judge Charles Breyer. Dr. Brody plans to appeal and significantly apologized for his actions. KQED and Behavioral Health Business.

Background on the indictment and conviction, TTA 24 January and prior as noted in the article. There is no additional information to date on the grand jury charges from December 2025 of the Done and Mindful companies. 

Editor’s POV: Done wasn’t the first–the far larger Cerebral was in 2022. While it is still in business, Cerebral has spent much of its time and fisc in litigation and settlements. Neither will be the last.  DOJ and Federal agencies are cracking down hard on waste, fraud, and abuse in healthcare; major targets of DOJ/HHS/DEA scrutiny are telementalhealth and substance use disorder (SUD) management, including prescribing and payments. More to come.

Another chute for Oracle, leading to the Hacking trap door. The vulnerability is within Oracle’s E-Business Suite (EBS) and affects the file transmission component of Oracle Payments payments. The flaw has been tracked as CVE-2026-46817 and carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. 900 systems may be exposed, though Oracle flagged it in their May patch updates. The US National Vulnerability Database states that the vulnerability can be exploited remotely over HTTP without authentication. Oracle software seems to be a favorite target of hackers. Cybersec organizations Defused and Shadowserver, along with the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have flagged multiple software vulnerabilities across Oracle’s EBS, WebLogic Server, and PeopleSoft.  Computing UK

Is it a Chute or Ladder? Or Run For Your Life? OpenAI and Sam Altman made headlines before the July 4 celebrations with an offer of a 5% share of the company to the US Federal Government. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are imminent IPOs. The Financial Times report is based upon “early conversations” cited from two insiders. A 5% share, based on current valuations, is about $42.6 billion. It is not only a nice chunk of change in the public fisc but also a clever PR move that may help neutralize public blowback and downright hostility towards unwanted technology; sprawling, noisy, spewing, heat pooling and energy-greedy data centers; AI job displacement; companies discovering that AI is draining them dry without ROI; environmental and community groups; unions, local governments, and more. How it will mollify people who are angry about any of the previous is doubtful. Nor will it please those aligned with socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who is demanding close to half of OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s value to be held in a sovereign wealth fund.

Whether Anthropic and the hyperscalers building like mad such as Oracle, Meta, Microsoft and others would follow Altman’s lead is debatable. The Computing UK take on this is that it is a cynical and obvious bribe, perhaps one worthy of a Marie Antoinette (who may never have said ‘let them eat cake’…but nevermind). The accountant or computing side of this Editor’s brain flags that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic are remotely profitable. Oracle as a hyperscaler has already fallen into a debt canyon from where it may not emerge. Likely, Oracle is not the only one either, if you isolate AI from hyperscalers’ other sustaining businesses.

A generous offer or a Trojan Horse? You pick….

In this Editor’s view, it satisfies no one, solves no real problems, puts power in exactly the wrong hands, and creates a major conflict of interest in the objective and responsible development of AI.

In the Ladder department, Meta is talking up selling its excess AI cloud computing capacity, thus creating a new revenue stream. If this Editor is not mistaken, it’s similar to the Amazon Web Services model. A second stream would be renting out its AI application programming interface (API) to developers. The charge will be based on usage. That assumes that Meta is envisioning a time that they will have that excess capacity to sell. Right now, there is a dearth of actual, online data centers and a shortage of capacity [TTA 14 May].  Computing UK

A $110 million split raise for Pearl Health rounds it out. The Medicare value-based care management services organization (MSO) and population health services for providers gained a $50 million Series C equity investment from Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Viking Global Investors, AlleyCorp, and Ulysses Capital, plus a $60 million debt facility led by Trinity Capital. The new funds will be used for developing their AI platform, turning clinical intelligence into measurable outcomes, growing health system and payer partnerships, expansion into Medicare Advantage, and new risk offerings. Pearl’s funding to date is $205 million since 2020. It claims that it reached profitability last year and will triple its patient base from 2024 to the end of this year. It currently serves 10,000 providers across 40 states, with more than 250,000 Medicare beneficiaries, in CMS ACO models such as the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and ACO REACH ending this year. The shrinking list of competitors in this space include Aledade and Astrana Health (which bought one of the pioneers, Collaborative Health Systems).  Release, MedCityNews

Breaking: Anthropic files confidential S-1 with SEC for IPO, less than one week after $65B raise. But is this Peak AI?

June 2, 2026 | by

It’s raining mega-IPOs. One week after Oura’s filing a confidential S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its IPO, massively bigger Anthropic, the developer of Claude AI, has done the same. As with Oura, neither share price nor number of shares has been disclosed in this preliminary filing. Anthropic release

The S-1 filing comes on top of their 28 May announcement of a $65 billion Series H funding led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. The valuation of $965 billion makes Anthropic the most valuable AI company on Planet Earth and perhaps the entire Solar System, surpassing OpenAI by about $113 billion. Anthropic’s valuation in February was $380 billion with their Series G raise, so the Series H valuation multiplied that by a stunning 2.5 times+ in three months. The new funds will be used for AI research, expanding its computing power for Claude, and scaling its products and partnerships.  CNBC, Mobihealthnews, Anthropic release

Anthropic’s over-the-top valuation was boosted by its projected annual revenue run of $50 billion, tipping into profitability this quarter, beating its own growth metrics regularly, and introducing new Claude products such as Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Mythos Preview with advanced cybersecurity available to a limited group of companies. Anthropic in January rolled out Claude for Healthcare for providers and consumers. Claude pulled in front in corporate sales, ahead of OpenAI, as of April, and last month inked a new partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb to implement Claude throughout the company.

But are we at Peak AI? Axios, never one to shy away from Cold Buckets of Water when it makes for a good lede, has been trumpeting for the past week that companies are suddenly shying away from their “discovery” of soaring AI costs. Suddenly, ballooning IT costs, uncertain productivity gains, and a strange combination of employee overuse and sudden skepticism are causes for concern. An AI consultant told Axios that employees blew through half a billion dollars in a single month because they didn’t put usage limits on Claude licenses. Then the CEO of an AI software company, CloudBees, admitted that companies are using workforce cuts to offset their soaring AI costs. This has to be one of the worst-kept secrets in corporate America. Even a casual peruser of LinkedIn would have known this a year ago.

Corporate adoption in Axios‘ view is running into four expensive headwinds such as:

  • Using AI to automate disliked tasks rather than prioritizing revenue-generating tasks–which is understandable without guidance and pressure on time.
  • Using AI for trivial tasks such as checking the weather (well, no one said they couldn’t)
  • Leadership is clueless on what AI tools work and are throwing licenses at the employee wall to see what sticks.
  • Reluctance to give AI models proprietary information, which makes the AI tool less effective. (Not feeding AI models proprietary information to prevent it from becoming public in LLM models is, one would believe, an understandable concern.)

Even OpenAI’s Sam Altman commented when Anthropic’s Series H was announced that corporate costs are the most valid concern to date.

Unless there is a massive enterprise pullback in AI spend, though, look to Anthropic floating that IPO no later than the fall, even if corporate AI spend pulls back. It’s to be expected. The Gartner Hype Curve is fully in gear and the momentum from Inflated Expectations to the Trough of Disillusionment will continue, until it is processed and moves on to the Slope of Enlightenment.

A Must-Read potpourri: the ‘math’ of AI data center builds, healthcare AI failures, telehealth in schools, Hippocratic AI’s problems, the loss of empathy.

May 14, 2026 | by | 1 Comment

Your Editor will be Away From The Desk more than a bit over the next two weeks that lead up to the US Memorial Day holiday. I’ve collected seven articles to read and consider over the next few days. Enjoy!

Where Are All The Data Centers?

Author: Ed Zitron.  Self-published on Where’s Your Ed At?

If you’re puzzled about the ‘math’ of data centers–what capacity is available now, what is actually online/operational, and what’s the pipeline like–you will appreciate the detail that Mr. Zitron has gone to in cataloging those and much more. It turns out that we are not in the Land of Math, but in the Land of Myth, ruled by the Great Oz.

Despite what the builders say, and Microsoft’s and Oracle’s ever-cheery press releases, operational data centers are a fraction of what’s needed now or projected. The centers take 18-24 months to build and then many more months to complete–to fit out with chips, cooling, power, and networking that links sites and the end users. The AI giants, despite all the money flowing their way, will run out of money before the operating capacity they need gets online. Every data center takes 18-24 months to build, and even with retrofitting older data centers, the capacity is not there, nor for some time to come. In other words, the cavalry is in a neighboring country, much less the next state. Nobody has yet built an operating 1 GW data center. Centers are in megawatts and that, not many MWs. 

FTA:

  • “Oracle is building 7.1GW of total capacity for OpenAI, and keeps — laughably! — saying 2027 or 2028, when at this rate, Stargate Abilene won’t be done until mid-2027, and the rest either never get finished or are done in 2030 or later.”
  • “This is setting up a horrifying situation where Oracle desperately needs OpenAI to pay it for capacity that doesn’t exist, and if it ever gets built, it’s likely to be years after OpenAI has run out of money, which is the same problem that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have with their $748 billion of deals with Anthropic and OpenAI, though thanks to the $340 billion or more necessary to build the Stargate data centers, Oracle’s problems are far more existential.”

The article also makes the point that Oracle does not have the fallback businesses that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have to cushion the blow of AI failure. Oracle has the bottomless pit of Oracle Health, only one part of which is the VA EHR. It has a crushing burden of a massive debt load, the most recent being financed by a large bond fund since banks wouldn’t touch it. It kicked 30,000 employees and their expertise  to the curb. Will Larry Ellison sell a yacht or an island to help finance this as a 40% owner? More in Oracle Steps Back From The Debt Brink and Oracle’s Rock and Hard Place in Abilene

This is one long, well-written, and researched analysis by Mr. Zitron, whose expertise is in PR and is a well-known Silicon Valley critic. 

Telehealth in Schools: Expanding Student Access in a Hybrid Health Care System

Author: Paul Samargedlis. Published on Telehealth.org

Healthcare shortages across the US are affecting K-12 schools and children’s health. School-based telehealth programs can reduce absenteeism, expand access to mental health care, and deliver preventive care, bringing that care to where children already are. School-based telehealth programs in states such as Texas and North Carolina have demonstrated measurable improvements in attendance and emergency department utilization. Much will have to change in coordinating efforts and obtaining funding among school systems, local providers, and governments.

Artificial Intelligence Acquisitions: Agencies Should Collect and Apply Lessons Learned to Improve Future Procurements

Author: Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report to Congressional Requesters. April 2026 (49 pages)

Federal agencies reportedly more than doubled their use of artificial intelligence (AI) from 2023 to 2024, and they used a range of approaches to acquire additional AI capabilities through fiscal year 2025. In April 2025, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidance to help agencies acquire AI responsibly, but agencies have not by and large shared that knowledge. This paper attempts to fill this gap in part. GAO identified trade-offs, challenges and benefits. The paper identifies approaches agencies made in acquisition and makes recommendations. The recommendations most impact DOW, DHS, GSA, and the VA.

Top AI Failures in Healthcare

Author: Dmitrii Gorbunov. Published on LinkedIn.

Mr. Gorbunov sums up five costly failures (or about to be failures) where AI has been used in healthcare: physician decision overrides (UnitedHealthcare), claims denials (Cigna), fabrications of consent documents (Sharp Healthcare), and adding diagnostic codes without physician confirmation (Kaiser Permanente). The fifth one, Doctronic, was spoofed by Mindguard to issue triple the dose of Oxycontin [TTA 26 Mar]. The lack of rules, audit and audit trails that can be confirmed and trusted will cost healthcare organizations money and already are having legal consequences.

The next may require subscription to view on Substack

The Architecture of Voice: Why AI Tools Can Mimic Style But Not The Voice

Stuart Miller (Haverin Consulting)’s fourth article on AI’s effect on language and writing. An AI LLM can partly fill two parts of the Competence Framework–Skills and Knowledge–but it does not have Experience. It is incomplete in these three points of Context, and Voice represents the accumulation of Context. FTA: “The dangerous part is the assumption that accelerated Knowledge substitutes for Experience, when in fact accelerated Knowledge, and improved Skills untethered from time, is precisely the recipe for the Builder’s Mirage. The Builder’s Mirage is the illusion of competence, produced without the underlying thing being present.”

Sergei Polevikov’s Substack under AI Health Uncut will require subscription to fully view. His latest are:

Hippocratic AI Fires Its International Sales Team

It’s turning into Theranos 2.0. FTA: “Revenue is an estimated $17–20M ARR. Burn rate is $404M.” Their customers are also their investors. and “Hippocratic AI has quietly withdrawn from all of its international markets, terminated every international contract, and let go of the international sales team that built those relationships.” Contracts were sold without country language versions, adequate GPU infrastructure, and compliance.

Christina Farr: “Where is all of our empathy? Where did it go?”

Christina Farr is the former CNBC healthcare tech reporter, founder of  Second Opinion Media, and is a funder/advisor in the field. The article is derived from his and Alex Koshykov’s interview for their podcast Digital Health Inside Out (48 minutes, go to YouTube, no paywall). “A no-holds-barred conversation about what’s broken in healthcare media, what’s about to break in digital health, and why she’s not coming back to journalism.”

Until next week….

Funding/deal roundup: WHOOP’s $575M Giant raise, Anthropic buys med AI startup for $400M, early stage fundings for Jimini, Insight Health; Noom buys compounder; Mount Sinai NY to embed OpenEvidence

April 9, 2026 | by

Deals lately are very large…or very small. All have “AI” somewhere. Some unusual ones this past week.

The WHOOP wearable definitely whooped it up with a $575 million Series G (for Giant) funding. It’s a fitness and health watch that is reasonably trim and presentable sans a screen. It tracks sleep, activity, heart health and menstrual cycles (if applicable) through measurement of heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate (RHR), respiratory rate, and blood oxygen levels, and appeals to the very athletic with metrics around recovery and strain. The Boston-based company claims 2.5 million members internationally; in 2025 it marked 2025 growth of 103% and exited at the infamous ‘run rate’ metric of $1.1 billion. Their AI twist is around biometric data and how it is used to guide tracking and performance. It is heavily pitched to elite sports with famous athlete endorsers/investors such as soccer star Cristiano Rinaldo, basketball’s LeBron James, and golfer Rory McElroy.

The round was led by Collaborative Fund and includes global participation from a gang of investors including 2PointZero Group, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Mubadala Investment Company, Abbott, Mayo Clinic, Macquarie Capital (entities administered by Macquarie Capital), Glade Brook, B-Flexion, IVP, Foundry, Accomplice, Affinity Partners, Promus Ventures, and Bullhound Capital alongside a group of prominent global athletes and individual investors. The additional funds will be used for growth in the US plus international expansion across Europe, the GCC, Latin America, and Asia. The wonderfully subjective (by investors) metric of valuation stands at $10.1 billion. Total funding since 2012 is over $900 million.

WHOOP received the infamous Warning Letter from FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) in July 2025 regarding marketing claims for Blood Pressure Insights (BPI) on the basis that the company did not have an approved application for premarket approval (PMA) or 510(k) approval of that feature. The founder/CEO is contesting FDA as he believes that the feature is for general wellness purposes and is covered under the 21st Century Cures Act.  Mobihealthnews, WHOOP release

(In all honesty, this Editor had only vaguely heard of it, but her idea of a expensive watch usually has the name Elgin or Hamilton on the face and is usually antique (Omega too, sigh). In fitness watches, she thinks of Apple, Samsung, and the low-profile Withings (which makes traditionally styled smartwatches) but none of them have persuaded her to part with several hundred dollars.)

Anthropic buys a tiny bio research software developer for a stunning $400 million in stock. Coefficient Bio was founded only eight months ago and reportedly had only nine employees. It was so stealthy that it never got past the placeholder website. The amount was reported by its 50% owner, venture capital firm Dimension, which realized a hefty 38,513% IRR on the investment. Coefficient was working on AI models and software for biological research.  Apparently founder Samuel Stanton and his team will join Anthropic’s Health Care Life Sciences area. It’s interesting that Anthropic is building up their healthcare footprint after making their customized AI available to both consumers and clinicians, quite a contrast to OpenAI’s purchase of TPTN, a small podcaster of tech news and personalities (CNBC). HISTalk 4/6/26, Silicon Angle, Newcomer

Early stage companies also nabbed some decent fundings

Behavioral health therapy assistant Jimini Health raised $17 million in seed funding from M13, Town Hall Ventures, LionBird, Zetta Venture Partners, and OneMind, bringing total funding to more than $25 million. Their AI-forward (of course) Sage platform fills the niche left by fully remote telementalhealth companies in supporting large behavioral health provider organizations. NYC-based Jimini  promotes a clinician-supervised and controlled patient-facing, reimbursement-ready and compliant infrastructure with licensed clinicians maintaining oversight of every patient interaction. According to the release, the funding will be used to build partnerships with “several of the largest behavioral health provider organizations in the country and expand Sage’s clinical capabilities across comorbidities, care settings, and patient engagement modalities”. Release, Behavioral Health Business, Mobihealthnews

Insight Health’s $11 million Series A will be used to scale its agentic AI platform. The round was led by Standard Capital, with participation from Kindred Ventures, Pear VC, Eudemian, 43 and ElevenLabs. Insight Health uses AI to automate routine clinical and non-clinical tasks such as phone and front-desk coordination, referral and fax processing, pre-clinical intake, and clinical documentation. For instance their agents engage with patients directly via voice or text. Current customer base is in clinics. Their Aura AI Scribe and Virtual Care Assistant are available in athenahealth’s Marketplace. Their total funding is about $16 million. Release, Mobihealthnews

Short takes:

Noom buys 503A licensed pharmacy Tailor Made Compounding (TMC). The buy, according to Noom, will enable them to expand beyond weight loss GLP-1s further into the healthy aging segment, with longevity peptides, hormone replacement, and cosmetics. Noom has weathered several pivots, starting in 2008 with fitness apps, then added behavioral change with a weight-loss coaching app in 2017. It has pretty much settled into the lucrative e-prescribing and wellness ‘preventative care’ area targeting health plans and employers. TMC’s client base includes 400 clinics and multiple telehealth partners, which presumably Noom will let them maintain. Acquisition cost and staff transitions were not disclosed beyond integration ‘later this summer’.  Release, Mobihealthnews

‘IT’ clinical information search engine/AI chatbot OpenEvidence inks deal with NY’s Mount Sinai Health System. It is Mount Sinai’s first enterprise-wide AI deployment and integration across clinical roles, according to the health system’s announcement last week. It will be integrated into their Epic EHR. OpenEvidence, with a eyeblinking valuation of $12 billion [TTA 13 Feb], claims a daily average usage by 40% of US doctors in 10,000 hospitals and medical centers of their free search engine trained on journals and clinical medical data only. It fills a gap that competitors Doximity, Epocrates, and Medscape aren’t doing. It has added clinical trial matching to its capabilities filtering trials by study design, enrollment status, and geographic proximity. This adds on to Sutter Health’s integration into doctors’ Epic workflows announced earlier this year. Healthcare IT News