Business News – Feb 23, 2025

For Shiv Rao, practicing doctor and founder of $2.75 billion AI startup Abridge, innovation is an art form

Allie Garfinkle. Fortune. Feb 17, 2025.

Like in a video game, Rao is determined to chase after unexpected detours that aren’t connected to the main mission—at least, not obviously. Last year, the first time I had coffee in-person with Rao, CEO and founder of healthcare AI startup Abridge, he was on a particularly ambitious side quest. As we walked out into a balmy Santa Monica morning, Rao earnestly asked me: I’ve been trying to track down Rick Rubin. Do you know how to find him?

I was honored and bemused that Rao thought that there was a snowball’s chance I had any way of finding Rubin, perhaps music’s most influential (and enigmatic) producer. Both a guru and a ghost in popular culture, Rubin melts into the artists he works with—think: everyone from the Beastie Boys and Eminem to Johnny Cash and Adele. Though he has been known to occasionally give interviews, Rubin is frequently described as reclusive. He likes to be hard to find.

At first glance, Rao’s mission to meet Rubin is a deeply surprising side quest. But Rao’s career is in many ways a testament to the value of branching out. After spending most of his professional life as a full-time cardiologist, Rao in 2018 founded Abridge, now valued at $2.75 billion. He remains a practicing physician, a calling he’s devoted to and which helps inform his “day job” running the more than 200-person startup.

“I think side quests serve the long game if they’re strategic,” Rao told Fortune. “So much of what this company’s about is mission, and about chemistry. I think being able to inject the right ingredients in the right order is what creates magic over time.”

Rao has had all kinds of side quests through the years. For example, Rao specifically tracked down New Zealand-based interior designer Rufus Knight, known for his theatrical and tactile spaces, to design Abridge’s offices. In another mission, Rao convinced Bay Area magician David Gerard to join the company’s cap table.

But Rubin was unique, his work a prism through which Rao has been thinking about the possibilities at his own company. “What’s amazing about Rick Rubin is his domain transfer,” Rao told Fortune. “He can connect the dots between the Beastie Boys, the Avett Brothers, and Aerosmith. He’s a reflection. He’s trying to reflect who the artist is, trying to beam back the best of them. And that’s what we want Abridge to do for doctors.”

Abridge—which uses AI to turn doctor-patient conversations into structured clinical notes, integrating with health records in real-time—is currently deployed across more than 100 U.S. health systems. And the company now looks set to expand further: Abridge recently raised a $250 million Series D, led by entrepreneur-investor Elad Gil and VC firm IVP. The company has been on an unmistakable rise through the AI boom, after years of setbacks and closed doors amid an increasingly dire time in healthcare marked by public anger and political uncertainty.

For Rao, the success that Abridge is now seeing is a validation of perseverance, technology trends, and a wide-ranging philosophy that has distinguished the startup from its competitors. And in a market as fast-moving as AI, the physician-entrepreneur knows the next challenge is already underway.

“These last couple months, the thing I’ve been waiting for is finally happening, where doctors are using Abridge as a verb,” said Rao. “They’re saying, ‘I’m going to Abridge my conversation today’… It’s our job, with this announcement too, to define what that means.”

Two paths ahead

If you rewind to a teenage Rao, he didn’t necessarily scream “doctor.”

Rao grew up in Pittsburgh, a high school skateboarder who listened to outsider music—Fugazi, Minor Threat, Depeche Mode, and The Cure. He stayed near home to go to college at Carnegie Mellon, living at “the intersection of computer science and art” and deejaying in art

Episode 4214 - Feb 24 - Tiếng Anh - Tin Kinh doanh - Ngày 23 tháng 2, 2025 - Vina Technology at AI time

Vina Technology at AI time - Công nghệ Việt Nam thời AI

Episode 4214 - Feb 24 - Tiếng Anh - Tin Kinh doanh - Ngày 23 tháng 2, 2025 - Vina Technology at AI time