OpenAI acquires health records startup Torch in deal reportedly worth $100 million

OpenAI

• OpenAI acquires health records startup Torch for about $100 million in equity
• Torch team and tech will join OpenAI to boost ChatGPT Health initiative
• Torch's platform unifies medical data for AI, enhancing health info analysis and management.

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OpenAI has confirmed the acquisition of Torch, a little-known health records startup, as part of its push into AI-powered health tools. The financial terms were not disclosed, but a source cited by The Information said OpenAI paid roughly $100 million in equity for the company.

Torch was a four-person startup developing an app designed to consolidate a person’s medical data into a single system that could be used by AI models. The platform aimed to pull information from multiple sources, including doctor visits, lab results, wearable devices, consumer wellness tests and other health portals. The company described its technology as a “medical memory for AI”, built to unify fragmented health records into a single contextual layer.

As part of the acquisition, Torch’s entire team will join OpenAI. The deal is structured as an acqui-hire, meaning the primary focus is on bringing the team and its underlying technology into OpenAI rather than continuing Torch as a standalone product.

Torch co-founder Ilya Abyzov said in a post on X that the team first met while working at Forward Health, a company known for its AI-driven primary care clinics. Forward Health shut down abruptly in late 2024, despite having raised more than $400 million in funding. The Torch acquisition offers a different outcome for the founders and their work.

OpenAI said Torch’s technology and team will contribute to its newly announced ChatGPT Health initiative. The service is intended to help users analyse, organise and manage health-related information using ChatGPT, though OpenAI has so far shared limited details about how the product will work in practice or how medical data will be handled.

The acquisition signals OpenAI’s growing interest in health applications, an area that brings both opportunity and regulatory complexity. By focusing on data aggregation and context rather than diagnosis or treatment, OpenAI appears to be positioning ChatGPT Health as a support and analysis tool rather than a clinical service.

With Torch, OpenAI adds specialised talent and early-stage health data infrastructure as it expands ChatGPT beyond general-purpose AI and into more sensitive, domain-specific use cases.