Another week, another ambient AI mega-round – this time from none other than Ambience Healthcare and its massive $243M Series C.
Welcome to the unicorn club. The round vaulted Ambience’s valuation to $1.25B, making it the second-highest valued startup in the ambient arena behind Abridge, which was valued at an eye-popping $5.3B during its recent $300M Series E.
- Funnily enough, a16z led both rounds. We don’t usually see VCs cut a check for a startup then turn around and fund their biggest competitor, but playing both sides is a great way to not lose a race.
Ambience isn’t just a scribe. It’s an ambient AI platform for documentation, coding, and clinical documentation integrity.
- The platform was “architected with the understanding that health systems are not monolithic enterprises” and adapts to the unique context of different care settings.
If you ain’t first, you’re last. Ambience was one of the only ambient AI players to lean in on the revenue cycle component right out of the gate, and the head start is reflected in the results from head-to-head pilots.
- During a six month bake-off at Cleveland Clinic (now a happy customer), Ambience saw 80% clinician utilization and an NPS of 60, both the highest by a wide margin.
- Ambience Co-Founder Nikhil Buduma told us that the secret sauce is the platform’s ability to make clinicians feel like “it’s almost reading their minds,” which is made possible by continuous fine-tuning the model for individual specialties.
Where do we go from here? If the launch of Doximity’s free scribe taught us anything, it’s that documentation is officially a commodity. Ambience’s new funds will help it do everything else.
- That includes diving deeper into the revenue cycle and clinical trials, as well as moving upstream into taking care of patients outside of the four walls of the clinic.
- It also includes scaling up operations, and Ambience has already begun hiring dozens of former startup founders to lead its new verticals.
The Takeaway
We’re now in a world where perfect transcripts are table stakes, which means the winners of the ambient AI race will be the companies that can help carry the tasks happening after the clinical conversation. Ambience just bulked up to do some heavy lifting.
