In essence, Lotus is building an AI doctor that functions like a real medical practice, equipped with a license to operate in all 50 states, malpractice insurance, HIPAA-compliant systems, and full access to patient records. The key difference is that the majority of the work is done by AI, which is trained to ask the same questions a doctor would.
Last week, I published a deep exploration into Palantir and its founder factory and how the company's power and success can be explained by its ability to attract elite talent and how it empowers them to develop their skills and learn new ones in the projects they pursue.
On Wednesday, the startup announced that it raised an additional $250 million in Series D funding at a $12 billion valuation, co-led by Thrive Capital and DST. That's double the valuation from its last raise in October: $200 million at $6 billion, led by GV. It has now raised a total of $700 million, the company says, from backers including Sequoia, Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, Blackstone, Bond, Craft Ventures, Mayo Clinic, and others.
The tech draws on patients' medical claims, benefits information, and other data to offer on-demand answers to health-related questions. Included Health is tapping into a hot area in healthcare AI, where it's competing against other health startups as well as tech heavyweights. Alphabet's Verily released its own AI-powered app in October that allows patients to connect their medical records and ask a chatbot their health-related questions.
Doctronic addresses this access problem by delivering AI-powered medical consultations in minutes rather than weeks, combining free, anonymous symptom assessments with on-demand access to licensed physicians across all 50 states for $39 per video visit. The platform has already processed over 15 million medical conversations with more than 1 million unique users, handling 50,000 weekly visits through its collective intelligence architecture where multiple specialized AI agents engage in clinical reasoning under physician oversight.