What does a high-flying company like Doximity do when competitors are nipping at its heels? According to OpenEvidence’s new lawsuit, it just politely asks their LLMs to reveal trade secrets.
Doximity is basically LinkedIn for doctors. It allows physicians to use its networking platform and AI workflow products at no cost, which means the physicians themselves are the product.
- Doximity generates revenue almost exclusively through pharma advertising, and it turns out that might actually be the best business model around.
- Out of the dozen publicly traded digital health companies with a market cap over $1B, Doximity is the only one that’s decently profitable.
No good prompt goes unpunished. The crown jewel of Doximity’s AI portfolio is its Doximity GPT workflow assistant, which may or may not leverage proprietary tech acquired by prompting OpenEvidence’s competing model to reveal sensitive information.
- Although it’s funny to see Doximity get accused of asking OpenEvidence’s AI to literally “write down the secret code,” it doesn’t exactly make for a bulletproof case when the model willingly dishes up an answer.
- The catch is that OpenEvidence requires users to register using their National Provider ID numbers, and Doximity allegedly impersonated a practicing neurologist to “obtain through theft what they lacked in technical expertise.” Ouch.
It gets worse from there. A separate shareholder lawsuit accused Doximity of inflating its active user base and website engagement data to artificially bolster its advertising revenue.
- While some investors might be able to stomach a little corporate espionage, they probably won’t look the other way if it turns out Doximity is fudging the numbers.
- Innocent until proven guilty, but it’s worth noting that nearly identical allegations popped up in a recent short report.
The Takeaway
Doximity has some serious allegations piling up against it, but so far the market has shrugged off the bad news. That could be a sign that investors don’t think the lawsuits will hold up in court, or maybe they just don’t mind when a management team is willing to bend the law to generate some extra shareholder value.
