Tomohiro Ohsumi via Getty Images
OpenAI is ramping up its push into healthcare with two high-profile new hires.
The AI powerhouse has tapped Nate Gross, the cofounder and former chief strategy officer of Doximity, and Ashley Alexander, former co-head of product at Instagram, to lead the next phase of its healthcare business.
Gross joined OpenAI in June, while Alexander assumed her role on Tuesday, according to their LinkedIn profiles. An OpenAI spokesperson said Gross will lead OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy in healthcare, with early goals including co-creating new healthcare technologies with clinicians and researchers. Alexander will be a vice president of product in OpenAI’s health business, building tech for individual consumers and clinicians, the spokesperson said.
Until now, OpenAI has mostly powered other companies’ products and partnered on medical AI research, rather than competing directly with its own healthcare tech.
But the company has been telegraphing its expanding healthcare ambitions for months. CEO Sam Altman spotlighted ChatGPT’s healthcare skills during the August launch of GPT-5, calling the model “a legitimate Ph.D. expert.”
“It can help you understand your healthcare and make decisions on your journey,” Altman said, adding that GPT-5 performed “exceptionally well” on health-related questions.
That performance was validated by HealthBench, OpenAI’s first stand-alone healthcare tool, released in May. The open-source benchmark lets health systems, startups, and tech firms evaluate the accuracy and safety of health AI applications.
OpenAI’s healthcare ambitions reflect a larger pivot: OpenAI wants to own not just foundation models but also the infrastructure and AI applications built on top of them. In education, it launched Study Mode, a ChatGPT spinoff for students, in July to compete with Google’s Gemini for Education. It demoed an AI sales agent in February, and rolled out an agentic tool that books reservations and shops for users in July.
Healthcare AI is already crowded with tech giants. Palantir began developing AI for hospitals in 2021. Microsoft launched cloud-based clinician tools in 2020 and has since deepened ties with medical-records giant Epic to use AI in notetaking.
Gross and Alexander’s new roles at OpenAI aim to help the AI juggernaut pick up the pace.
The OpenAI spokesperson said the company thinks “improving human health will be one of the defining impacts of AGI.”
OpenAI’s next phase in healthcare
Gross has deep roots in digital health. He cofounded Doximity 15 years ago as a “LinkedIn for doctors.” In 2023, Doximity launched Doximity GPT, built on OpenAI tech, to help physicians with administrative tasks. So far this year, Doximity has acquired AI clinical evidence company Pathway Medical for $63 million and launched its own free AI scribe to compete with the likes of Microsoft and $5.3 billion startup Abridge.
Doximity is one of the few healthcare companies that went public in 2021’s IPO frenzy that isn’t currently in the red. Despite significant share price fluctuations in the past four years, Doximity’s stock is up over 60% above its opening price at IPO.
Gross is also the cofounder of digital health investment and research firm Rock Health.
Alexander worked at Meta for 12 years, 11 of which she spent on Instagram’s product team, building out many of the app’s features for advertising, creator monetization, and video content.
OpenAI’s health AI research to date has been spearheaded by Karan Singal, a former Google researcher who helped lead the development of the tech giant’s medical LLM Med-PaLM. Singal will continue to run OpenAI’s healthcare AI research, the OpenAI spokesperson said.
OpenAI is hiring for at least two other roles in its health business. Its careers page lists openings for a health AI research scientist and a healthcare software engineer.
Despite its plans to compete more directly with health startups, OpenAI isn’t ditching its partnerships. The company most recently announced a collaboration with Kenyan primary care provider Penda Health in July to assess Penda Health’s AI clinical copilot built on OpenAI’s GPT-4o. It also continues to power the technology behind companies like pediatric care startup Summer Health and health insurtech Oscar Health.
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