A growing number of people are asking OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other LLMs about their health, often discovering that the chatbots provide remarkably useful medical insights.
KJ Dhaliwal (pictured left), who in 2019 sold the South Asian dating app Dil Mil for $50 million, says he has been thinking about the inefficiencies of the U.S. healthcare system ever since he was a child acting as a medical translator for his parents, and he saw the advent of LLMs as an opportunity to do something about it.
In May 2024, he launched Lotus Health AI, a free primary care provider that’s available 24/7 in 50 languages. On Tuesday, Lotus announced it raised $35 million in a Series A round co-led by CRV and Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to $41 million.
People are already consulting AI about their health, but Lotus goes a step further: it moves beyond those chats to facilitate actual medical care, including diagnosis, prescriptions, and specialist referrals.
In essence, Lotus is building an AI doctor that functions like a real medical practice, equipped with a license to operate in all 50 states, malpractice insurance, HIPAA-compliant systems, and full access to patient records.
The key difference is that the majority of the work is done by AI, which is trained to ask the same questions a doctor would.
Since AI models are also prone to hallucinations, the company always has board-certified human doctors from top health institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, and UCSF review the final diagnoses, lab orders, and medical prescriptions.
Lotus has developed an AI model that, similar to OpenEvidence, synthesizes the latest evidence-based research with a patient’s history and clinical answers to generate a treatment plan.
“AI is giving the advice, but the real doctors are actually signing off on it,” Dhaliwal told TechCrunch.
Lotus recognizes the limits of virtual care. For urgent health issues, Lotus directs patients to the nearest urgent care center or emergency room. And if a case requires a physical examination, the platform refers the patient to an in-person physician, Dhaliwal said.
Outsourcing such a significant portion of medical decision-making to AI is an ambitious bet given the regulatory hurdles in healthcare. For instance, physicians are restricted to seeing patients only in the states where they hold a license.
As CRV general partner Saar Gur, who led the deal and joined the company’s board, put it: “There are many challenges, but it’s not SpaceX sending astronauts to the moon.”
Gur (pictured right), an early investor in DoorDash, Mercury, and Ring, is convinced that the telemedicine frameworks established during the pandemic, combined with recent breakthroughs in AI, allow Lotus to navigate many of the existing regulatory and engineering hurdles.
“It’s a big swing,” Gur said. But for an investor like Gur, that’s the draw: Lotus is attempting to fundamentally reimagine the entire primary care model.
At a time when primary care doctors are in short supply, Lotus claims it can see 10 times as many patients as a traditional practice, even when it limits each visit to 15 minutes.
The startup isn’t the only one building an AI doctor. Lightspeed-backed Doctronic is one of the competitors. Lotus is differentiating itself — at least for now — by offering its entire suite of care completely free of charge.
Dhaliwal said that eventual business models may include sponsored content or subscriptions, but the current focus remains entirely on product development and attracting patients rather than revenue.