A study in contrasts: OpenAI raises $122B, eMed’s $200M Series A. Then there’s Avo’s $10M Series A, Stedi’s $50M Series C. And Oracle expands Nashville campus!

April 2, 2026 | by

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).

This week’s Must Read: a deep dive on football’s Tom Brady’s involvement with GLP-1 e-Rx eMed

January 22, 2026 | by

For your reading before the NFL Conference championships on Sunday–when celebrity and phenomenal ability don’t necessarily translate to sound judgment. Sergei Polevikov’s latest dissection of Shady Digital Health Doings in AI Health Uncut focuses on Patriots’ quarterback great Tom Brady’s splashy deal with GLP-1 telehealth prescriber/reseller eMed.–then segues to eMed’s story. Brady was named chief wellness officer of the company last Monday. His job with them? “To raise awareness of a more accountable approach for employers to offer medically supervised population health benefits, including GLP-1 therapies, emphasizing the importance of eMed’s medical oversight and its ability to drive long-term health outcomes.” Qualifications? Brady was famous for his TB12 rigorous training and diet regimen, which extended his career to age 45, about 10-15 years longer than most players. He has zero medical background. 

Mr. Polevikov’s narrative documents Brady’s hands-on (so to speak) involvement with a 2014 football championship scandal (“Deflategate”), then his $30 million spokesman engagement with FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-currency exchange that spectacularly imploded in 2022. For a quarterback whose fame hinged on excellent judgment, except in returning to football after his first retirement, he (and other celebrities) didn’t do the due diligence. But eMed is a step further for Brady. He is more than an eMed endorser–he has an actual company title and an attributed function. Certainly, Brady did not come inexpensively for this relatively young company, funded most recently by Aon Investment for an undisclosed amount.

Background–and interesting intersections. eMed was founded in 2020 by investor Michael Ferro. It started with 2020’s hot product–pandemic Covid-19 tests with online reporting at $35. In 2023, they pivoted into GLP-1 e-prescribing and blood testing. Ferro also founded in-store health kiosk Higi in 2012, though departing management by 2016. Higi was sold to Ali Parsa’s Babylon Health after their spectacular SPAC in late 2021. This would not be the last time Ferro’s and Parsa’s paths would cross, as after Babylon’s Chapter 7 (US) and administration (UK), eMed bought the remains of Babylon Health UK while GP at hand stayed with a group of central London GPs and the NHS. Like the US, the UK operation markets GLP-1 meds to men and women on separate websites (HeMed and SheMed). The US sells both injectable GLP-1s and the new Wegovy oral semaglutide pill.

The rest of the article opens up eMed’s hood, looking at Michael Ferro’s background, some of his hires including Linda Yaccarino (ex-X), Dr. Patrice A. Harris (founder), and (under the chassis) Charlie Javice (a de facto CEO now facing seven years in Club Fed for defrauding JP Morgan with the sale of her company, Frank), and the parts that don’t quite work, such as its financials (allegedly burning through cash) and lack of patient outcomes on GLP-1 meds.

Part of the article is posted on LinkedIn. The article is also on AI Health Uncut on Substack, but a full read requires a modest subscription. It is definitely worth it. Sergei Polevikov is also the host of a podcast, Digital Health Inside Out (free on YouTube), recently interviewing Halle Tecco on what is really broken in healthcare, with a preview of her book ‘Massively Better Healthcare’ (out in February).

Short takes: follow up on Cano Health’s survival moves, eMed transitioning Babylon Health UK but Babyl Rwanda shuts, DEA extends telehealth prescribing for controlled substances thru 2024

October 11, 2023 | by

Cano Health takes the reverse stock split option to stay solvent. In Cano’s latest telenovela episode, a familiar stratagem for companies to drive up a dangerously low share price is to reverse stock split, usually in a large ratio. Cano is facing delisting on the NYSE as its shares traded, as of 11 September, below the $1 minimum for 30 days. [TTA 29 Sept]  Shareholders are being asked to approve a 1 for 60 ratio with the board having the right to adjust it down to 1-for-5 and up to 1-for-100, for both Class A and B common stock. At the current share price of $0.21, a new share’s value would be $12.60. No meeting date has been set, though the press release bluntly states that 30% shareholder ITC Rumba, LLC and the 20% held by current and former members of management and the board intend to vote in favor of it, achieving the necessary simple majority. 1:60 does sound last-ditch, reminiscent of Babylon Health’s late 2022 moves in a 1 for 25 exchange, before attempting to go private–and we know how that turned out. Release

eMed transitioning Babylon Health services in the UK. A check on Babylon Health’s UK website provides FAQs for current users. It leads with promises to expand digital-first primary care services on this registration page for visits, and to develop a chronic care management service starting with medical weight management using Wegovy. The FAQs also state there will be no disruptions to GP at Hand. There is a rebranding (left/above) that sunsets the Babylon name but retains the stylized heart. 

Babyl Rwanda‘s separate website and the eMed pages for Babyl Rwanda are still up, but a local report from 24 September states that the company has ceased operations in Rwanda. As of August, the government was scrambling to find buyers and to maintain operations to 2.4 million Rwandans. “According to Julien Mahoro Niyingabira, the Rwanda Health Communication Centre (RHCC) Division Manager, the Ministry of Health is in discussions with Babyl Rwanda to ensure continuity of services despite the closure of Babylon Health.” How that will be possible without a buyer to pay employees and maintain the operation is debatable. The New Times (Rwanda)

As for the US, the Babylon Health US site also remains up and intact with a small disclaimer at the top that US services are no longer available and to contact your health plan. It is the same as on our last visit on 14 September. It is odd to see, after another month, that no one has disabled the US services or corporate pages such as Investors. This is possibly because the architecture for the US pages are off the UK site (the tab at top has the eMed logo) and nobody is in the US operation to take down the pages. The US operation, in Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, is now in the tender hands of the US bankruptcy courts, where filings, documentation, and processes move slowly indeed with no further public news.

And when you can’t decide, extend. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) once again are extending Covid-time flexibilities for prescribing controlled substances through 2024.  After 38,000 comments on the proposed changes to rules after the last extension in May, DEA and HHS punted again on reimposing Ryan-Haight Act restrictions that would require in-person evaluations/visits prior to prescribing. This allows clinicians to prescribe Schedule II–V controlled medications via audio-video telemedicine encounters, including Schedule III–V narcotic controlled medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for maintenance and withdrawal management treatment of opioid use disorder. Final rules will be timed for Fall 2024. Another year’s breathing room for  6 Oct DEA announcement, Federal Register 10 October “Second Temporary Extension of COVID-19 Telemedicine Flexibilities for Prescription of Controlled Medications”, Healthcare Dive