$250M Bet on AI in Clinical Decision Support

OpenEvidence’s $250M raise signals strong adoption momentum in physician decision support tools across US healthcare

11 Feb 2026

A $250m funding round rarely passes unnoticed in healthcare. When it values a young firm at $12bn, it suggests something more than routine enthusiasm. OpenEvidence, an American maker of AI-powered clinical decision tools, has become one of the most closely watched companies in digital medicine.

The firm’s promise is simple. Doctors face a deluge of research papers, guidelines and clinical updates. OpenEvidence’s platform scans that material and produces concise summaries, each linked to peer-reviewed sources. The aim is not to replace judgment but to compress the time it takes to reach it. By attaching citations, the company seeks to reassure clinicians that the machine’s advice can be checked.

Adoption appears brisk. According to company data cited by Fierce Healthcare, more than 40% of American physicians use the platform daily across thousands of hospitals and medical centres. Those figures come from the firm itself and should be treated with caution. Even so, they suggest that AI decision support has moved beyond pilot projects and into routine use.

The timing is favourable. Health systems are strained by staff shortages, rising costs and widespread burnout. Tools that reduce the time spent searching for information or navigating databases are attractive. Daniel Nadler, the founder, has described the mission as building “medical superintelligence” for doctors, stressing that the technology is meant to augment, not replace, clinical expertise.

Yet scale brings scrutiny. Regulators and hospital leaders worry about accuracy, bias and overreliance. Clinical software that shapes decisions must be accountable when errors occur. Clear rules on validation, oversight and integration into existing workflows will matter as much as clever algorithms.

Investors are betting that such hurdles can be managed and that AI-driven decision support will become part of healthcare’s basic infrastructure. Whether OpenEvidence justifies its lofty valuation will depend less on novelty than on trust. In medicine, confidence is the rarest currency of all.