Startup investment has been on the rise this year, but some industries have benefited more than others.
AI-related healthcare is one of the spaces that have seen a significant rise in funding globally, Crunchbase data shows. Overall funding to the space is up this year, as more startups are tackling high-pain and high-cost parts of the healthcare system.
The broad trend: Venture investment in healthcare and biotech companies that have an AI bent has been on an upward trajectory in recent years. This year is on track to be another up one, with 2025’s funding totals already topping 2024’s full-year tallies.
It’s not entirely surprising why: Many healthcare organizations still operate with outdated tech, and the need for innovation is massive. (As one personal example, I was given a CD with X-ray imaging at a recent ER visit.)
The numbers: Investors put an estimated $10.7 billion into seed- through growth-stage funding to companies in AI-powered health tech categories so far this year, Crunchbase data shows. That means that 2025 funding is already 24.4% higher than the $8.6 billion raised in all of 2024.
Investment hit a high point in Q1 of this year, with a drop in the subsequent two quarters, per Crunchbase data.
Interestingly, a recent report from Menlo Ventures about AI and healthcare outlines the factors that are likely contributing to heightened investor interest. The report surveyed more than 700 health systems, outpatient, payer and life sciences leaders. Some of its findings include:
- AI adoption in healthcare — a $4.9 trillion industry — is now 2.2x faster than the broader economy. The industry, according to Menlo, represents one-fifth of the U.S. economy but only 12% percent of software spend.
- Startups are capturing the vast majority of spend, while legacy vendors struggle to keep up. Specifically, the survey found that 85% of all generative AI spend in healthcare currently flows to startups rather than incumbents.
- According to the firm’s research, 22% of healthcare organizations have implemented domain-specific AI tools, a 7x increase over 2024 and 10x over 2023.
- Medical documentation and back-office RCM, or revenue cycle management, comprise nearly 60% of all healthcare IT spending.
This year has seen multiple megarounds in the health care space.
The largest AI-related healthcare/biotech venture round of the year closed in March. That’s when Isomorphic Labs, a Google spinoff that provides AI-driven solutions for drug discovery and development, raised $600 million in a funding round led by Thrive Capital.
The financing marked the company’s first external funding round as it looks to apply artificial intelligence to the drug development process. Other investors included GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Alphabet.
Notably, more than one company in the space raised multiple rounds this year:
- Lila Sciences, a 2-year-old startup working on what it calls a “scientific superintelligence platform” for life sciences, chemistry and materials science, announced three funding rounds in seven months’ time: a $200 million seed round in March; a $235 million Series A in September and a $115 million Series A extension at a $1.3 billion valuation in October — for a total of $550 million raised in 2025 alone. Investors in the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company include General Catalyst, Alumni Ventures, Catalio Capital Management, Flagship Pioneering and NVentures.
- Abridge, a 7-year-old AI-driven platform that turns patient-clinician conversations into “structured” clinical notes for healthcare industries, raised a $250 million Series D in February and then a $300 million Series E just over four months later, valuing the Pittsburgh-based company at $5.3 billion. Backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Elad Gil, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and IVP.
- OpenEvidence, which provides AI-powered medical search and clinical decision support, raised three rounds in just over eight months’ time. In February, the 4-year-old Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup became a unicorn with a $925 million Series A raise led by Sequoia Capital. Then in July, it raised a $210 million Series B financing co-led by Kleiner Perkins and GV at a $3.5 billion valuation. Finally, in October, GV doubled down on its investment by leading a $200 million Series C financing at a $6 billion valuation.
There were many other interesting rounds raised in 2025 that caught our attention.
In early October, Duos, an AI-powered digital health platform for member activation and benefits execution, raising a $130 million strategic growth equity investment led by FTV Capital.
Also in October, DeepMind alumnus Domenic Donato raised $13 million for his startup, Attuned Intelligence, a developer of hospital call center AI agents. (The company told Crunchbase News that it was already processing thousands of calls daily. Attuned says it went live in 10 days at Lowell Community Health Center, handling every mainline call 24/7, and that it was working toward automating up to 70% of interactions across multiple languages.
Honey Health also recently emerged from stealth with $7.8 million in seed funding led by Pelion Health Partners. The company says its AI agents log into existing EHRs, or electronic health records, and autonomously complete full workflows end-to-end with the goal of cutting millions of dollars in administration overhead.
And in September, Hello Patient, a 1-year-old Austin-based conversational AI company aiming to “reinvent” patient communications, announced a $22.5 million Series A financing led by Scale Venture Partners.
For a bigger-picture view, below we put together a list of 10 of the year’s largest AI-related healthcare and biotech financings.
The broad takeaway: It’s clear that the overall AI investment boom has funneled more capital into healthcare as one of the sectors where AI can have a large, measurable impact. Funding is climbing because the technology is better, the need in healthcare is urgent, more providers are starting to adopt AI solutions, and investors are now seeing clearer paths to scale and profit.
Related Crunchbase queries:
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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