The $15 billion ad-powered AI startup your doctor may already be using

A startup most people have never heard of is suddenly sitting at a $15 billion valuation because doctors keep using its AI search tool. OpenEvidence, based in Miami and founded by serial entrepreneur Daniel Nadler in 2022, says it is now being used by nearly two-thirds of US doctors.

That kind of reach is unusual anywhere. In medicine, it is almost startling. Nadler told the Financial Times that many of America’s 1 million physicians processed more than 42 million prompts last month, using the chatbot to search medical journals and clinical guidelines when making decisions about diagnosis and treatment.

The company makes money from ads, which is part of why the scale has drawn so much attention. It has also grown mostly through word of mouth, not the usual heavy-handed healthcare sales routine.

Nadler described it as the first viral consumer internet app in healthcare. That sounds like a boast, but the numbers give it some teeth. The bigger question is what it means when a system built for patient care starts to look, and spread, like a consumer internet hit.