Abridge closed a $30M Series B from a slew of AI and healthcare leaders

Fifteen months after raising a $12.5 million Series A-1, Downtown Pittsburgh-based health tech company Abridge has raised a $30 million Series B.

The funding round was led by AI luminary Spark Capital, and included participation from existing investor Bessemer Venture Partners, along with healthcare leaders Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, CVS Health Ventures, UC Investments, Lifepoint Health, SCAN Health Plan and the American College of Cardiology.

“We share Abridge’s vision of doing all we can to help clinicians focus on their patients, rather than needing to multitask with documentation,” said Dr. John D. Halamka, president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, in a written statement.

Abridge is behind an app that records and condenses conversations between patients and doctors. COO Julia Chou Chapin told Technical.ly that securing the funding is a step forward in reaching the company’s mission to use generative AI to help clinicians and patients get more out of their appointments.

At Abridge, “we are the leader in clinical documentation AI and what we’re building is a way for people to get more from their healthcare conversations,” Chapin said. “When you think about health care, it’s fundamentally about people.”

Over the past year, Abridge has seen milestones such as hiring its first-ever chief scientific officer from Amazon, Zachary Lipton, as well as its first chief clinical officer, Tina Shah. According to Chapin, one of the things the newly secured funding will be put toward is adding to Abridge’s currently 50-person team. If you’re looking for a new position, note that the company’s machine learning team and marketing product and sales team are searching for new members.

“We’re investing in people,” Chapin said. “We are hiring across the board right now [and] in Pittsburgh, we have probably the highest density of machine learners and AI scientists here.”

Additionally, Abridge plans to continue investing in research and development. Chapin said this  fresh funding enables the company to accelerate its scale across even more healthcare systems across the US.

For the rest of 2023, as far as Chapin is concerned, the future for Abridge looks bright. Between the partnerships with well-respected medical institutions like UPMC, notable hires in the AI field, and its decision to enable the technology to be used in multiple languages, the COO said the company’s leadership is excited for the opportunities they anticipate will keep coming their way.

“We are really proud to be a member of the Pittsburgh community and excited for what this capital will allow us to do and continue to increase our Pittsburgh presence as well,” Chapin said.

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.