Define Ventures

Healthcare is one of the largest opportunities in AI, and the builders who understand the system are the ones turning it into results. During #SFTechWeek, Define Ventures is hosting a small-room happy hour and conversation for founders already building at the intersection of AI and healthcare, and for those seriously considering it: Health x AI Builders: An AI Founder's Guide to Healthcare. We'll sit down with two founders from our portfolio who came into healthcare as technologists and are now deploying AI across the system: Nitesh Shroff, CEO of Arintra, and Edward T., CEO of Readily. The conversation covers what it takes to sell into payers and providers, what fundraising looks like right now, and where early-stage builders are finding the openings. No healthcare background required. Just interest in where AI meets one of the economy's largest industries. 📅 Wednesday, October 7 | 5:15 PM PT 📍 In the Presidio, at The House Seats are limited. Request a spot via the link in the comments. cc: Chuka Esiobu

Five Define Ventures partner companies made TIME's World's Top HealthTech Companies of 2026: Cohere Health, hims & hers, Unite Us, Crescendo Health and Story Health by Innovaccer. Cohere Health earned an Outstanding rating in AI & Data Analytics, making it one of only 13 companies at that tier and marking its second consecutive year on the list. The spread is the signal. Cohere Health works in payer operations, hims & hers in consumer health, Unite Us in community services, Crescendo Health in clinical trial data and Story Health in cardiac care. The companies pulling ahead are the ones pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Congratulations to every company on the list, and to the five of ours redefining healthcare. See the full list: https://lnkd.in/ezYmCcQd

Proud of my colleagues at Define Ventures - great insights here! https://lnkd.in/gYDGdD4h

Aaaaand we're back with round 2 of our C-suite Payer and Provider Report! 👏 We at Define Ventures spend a *lot* of time with our strategic partners and very much value their perspectives. It gives us great insight into what matters to them, which in turn informs how and where we invest, as well as how we support our companies. As part of that work we interviewed 60+ senior leaders at the most forward thinking payers and providers to understand how their views on AI have evolved over the last few years. Two points that struck me in 2026 as compared to 2024: * Payers who are experiencing budget increases specifically for AI have skyrocketed 5x * Providers who are calling AI "An Immediate Priority" have more than doubled Read more about those and more; link in the comments

We asked payer and provider executives — 80% of them VP and above — where AI in healthcare actually stands. Three things came back loud: buy is beating build, change management decides success, and ROI is the hurdle to clear. What the data says: - 69% of payers and 75% of providers rate AI an immediate enterprise priority. The debate over whether is over. - 54% of payers now favor buy over build, up from 25% in 2024. The market has picked a side. - 83% of payers expect measurable ROI within 12 months. The clock is faster than healthcare has ever run it. The full report covers use-case maturity, pricing models, and what it takes to sell into both segments. Link in comments. #healthtech #AIinHealthcare #digitalhealth

Today we're proud to back Nuance Labs $50M Series A alongside Lightspeed, Accel, South Park Commons, and NVIDIA. Nuance Labs built an audiovisual and voice model that takes in voice and body language at the same time and responds with emotion that reads as real. For health systems, that means a front door where patients will get better care. Fangchang Ma, Edward Zhang, and Karren Yang are frontier researchers who have shipped for hundreds of millions of users at Apple and Meta. They are a great example of builders who’ve come to health care with a solution. Why we invested: https://lnkd.in/gUAD4u6i

Cleveland Clinic recorded nearly 16 million outpatient encounters last year across 23 hospitals. Thousands of the referrals that start those journeys still arrive by fax every day, and most are sorted, prioritized, and typed into the EMR by hand. This week Cleveland Clinic announced a partnership with our portfolio company Luminai to change that, beginning with referral intake and expanding across the enterprise from there. Alongside the news, Luminai's @macklu published a piece on why so many health system pilots never reach production. The demo works. Then the workflow turns out to cross four systems, the documents carry handwriting in the margins, the routing rules live in a supervisor's head, and the exceptions pile up. We believe this partnership matters well beyond Luminai. Cleveland Clinic signed up for a platform that learns how Cleveland Clinic works and then finishes the job inside the system of record, with a review step wherever a person's judgment is needed. Luminai's forward-deployed engineers sit with the operations teams and adapt each workflow rather than shipping a standard configuration, and every workflow they stand up makes the next one faster. We introduced Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran to Cleveland Clinic, so watching the two teams take this from a first conversation to an enterprise partnership is a particular point of pride. Congratulations to Kesava and the Luminai team as they redefine how health system operations get done. Mack's post: https://lnkd.in/gMckuhji

Marit Health was always built to be an ally to clinicians. Most clinicians negotiate the huge job contracts with almost no data. It's because their options aren't great. Ask former co-residents, post to Reddit, or interview elsewhere just to generate a competing offer. And now they've build a recruiting process that is clinician friendly. Clinicians aren't spamed with opportunities, they opt in and share their preferences. Only then are they matched with relevant jobs. As a result, their sales velocity is unheard of in healthcare -- they've signed 50 employers since the beginning of the year. Health systems and medical groups see the difference in speed to recruit when Marit does right by clinicians first Vikas Sabnani, co-founder and CEO, goes deep on all of it with Pear VC's Healthcare Playbook. Worth a read for anyone building trust-dependent data products in healthcare. Proud to have led Marit's seed round. Full conversation: https://lnkd.in/g4CJ-x6u

"It's rare to get this kind of direct access to operators and investors who really understand healthcare." That's from an early-stage founder who participated in our Define AI Fellows program, and it's at the core of why we do it. Fellows at the early stages of building get direct access to the people who make healthcare purchasing decisions and are paired with a Define investor in a tight-knit cohort of peers. Applications are now open for the next cohort: 10 weeks, commercially focused, built for SF-based founders just beginning to build AI in healthcare. Applications close at the end of September. Apply (or refer a founder): https://lnkd.in/gYik_H4e

Revenue cycle management is one of the biggest AI opportunities in healthcare, and health systems are moving quickly. Today, we're proud to announce that Define Ventures is leading Arintra's $25M Series B. Arintra powers coding at leading health systems including Endeavor, Rochester, UC Davis, Mercy Medical, and Reid Health, processes over $5B in claim value today, is available in the Epic Toolbox and on the athenahealth Marketplace, and earned an A+ from KLAS this year. Arintra has built the first enterprise-grade autonomous coding platform designed for how health systems operate. - Every major care setting — ambulatory, emergency, inpatient, and diagnostic - The broadest specialty coverage, with 23+ specialties including some of the most complex, like inpatient and surgery - The first and only explainable audit trail embedded directly in the EHR, so teams can understand, review, and defend every coding decision It's strategic enterprise infrastructure, and Arintra is setting that standard. Congratulations to Nitesh Shroff, Preeti Bhargava, PhD, and the entire Arintra team. We couldn't be prouder to partner with you as you define the future of revenue assurance in healthcare. Read why we invested: https://lnkd.in/g3v7dbTG