INSIGHTS
January 26, 2026

AI moves pretty fast

One hallmark of the current AI era? What once would’ve been nearly impossible in terms of funding velocity is now, just another Wednesday.

Hyperbole aside, OpenEvidence’s $250M raise last week—its fourth in less than twelve months—pushed the company to a $12B valuation and more than $700M in total funding. For those keeping tabs at home, that means its valuation has doubled multiple times in under a year. And this isn’t an anomaly anymore. Abridge and Hippocratic AI followed similar playbooks last year, quickly closing successive mega rounds with multiplying valuations to match.

This breakneck pace is unfolding alongside clear investor preferences. In 2025, AI-enabled digital health companies captured more than half of total funding, commanding roughly a 19% premium on average deal size—swelling to 61% at Series C. The implicit bet appears to be that AI itself can compress learning curves, accelerate product-market fit, and earn scale faster.

So while the momentum is undeniably exciting, it also raises necessary questions: is speed to unicorn status being conflated with speed to maturity? And when years of learning are compressed into quarters, what's the downstream impact to strategy, operations, and execution once the dust settles? Stay tuned, we’re all about to find out.

Headlines

  ACA Sign-Ups Fall As Higher Premiums Push People Off Plans
An 800,000-enrollee slide shows the ACA marketplace is already contracting under cost pressure NBC

Amazon Launches AI Health-Care Tool For One Medical Members
Latest consumer-facing AI tool launch can hand off requests directly to care teams CNBC

 Teladoc’s Mental Health Arm BetterHelp Has Quietly Expanded The Use Of AI 
Expansion coincides with a push to offer therapy services to consumers with insurance coverage Endpoints 

 FDA Clears Aidoc Tool To Detect 14 Different Conditions From A CT Scan 
Decision reflects a regulatory opening for bundled AI models as single-indication tools strain hospital adoption STAT
 

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