OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Personally Courts Hospitals to Adopt AI Tools

Today on Forbes, how OpenAI plans to win over doctors, patients, and hospitals. When OpenAI wants to sell the country's biggest health systems on its healthcare ambitions, it often brings in one person a hospital CEO won't ignore, Sam Altman. The 41-year-old Altman is OpenAI's billionaire co-founder, CEO, and chief converter of skepticism into purchase orders. He has sold investors, boards of directors, and governments on the idea that OpenAI is the engine of the next computing era. Now he is personally making that case to hospitals. Altman's involvement in these sales calls underscores just how central healthcare is to OpenAI's ambitions. In January, the AI behemoth announced eight major health systems, including

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and HCA Healthcare, are now customers of its enterprise-grade healthcare tools. OpenAI has also tapped hundreds of doctors to make its health answers better for the more than 230 million people globally who turn to ChatGPT for advice every week. It's rolling out a new version of ChatGPT for clinicians, as well as ChatGPT Health, a tab within the main app that allows consumers to securely connect their medical records and their wellness apps, such as Apple Health and MyFitnessPal. And its models power other health companies' tools to create clinical notes and help consumers understand their lab results.

OpenAI has rolled out three new products focused on healthcare in the past six months alone. Nate Gross, who leads OpenAI's healthcare strategy, says, quote, "It is one of our most important verticals at OpenAI." Gross, who joined OpenAI in 2025, has an MD from the Emory University School of Medicine and an MBA from Harvard. And he previously co-founded $4 billion market cap healthcare network Doximity. While OpenAI is also making a play for other big markets like education and finance, Gross says, "Quote, everyone experiences health issues, and this is an opportunity to help everyone."

Healthcare, after all, represents some 18% of the entire US economy. And AI has huge potential to help consumers make better decisions about their health, aid doctors in providing better care, and assist health systems in running their operations more efficiently, if it's done right. OpenAI's sweeping push into healthcare comes at a make-or-break moment for the company. While OpenAI sparked the AI revolution with ChatGPT 3 years ago, it appears to have conceded some of its edge to fast-growing rivals like Anthropic and Google. The company brought in $13 billion in revenue in 2025, but its net loss reportedly ballooned nearly eightfold to $39 billion last year from $5 billion in 2024. In April, OpenAI reportedly missed

important revenue and user targets. The $852 billion valued juggernaut filed confidentially to go public in June, but under pressure from investors is now said to be considering delaying its IPO until next year. While the company won't break out financial metrics for its healthcare operations in advance of its IPO, healthcare is clearly key to its future success. But OpenAI will need to win out against Anthropic, which has been focused on enterprise from the start and has its own suite of healthcare products. The company will also need to win out against Google, as well, and all the health tech companies gunning for the same market. As models' capabilities become increasingly commoditized, they'll also have to compete on pricing,

as hospitals run on razor-thin margins, John Beadle, managing partner of health-focused Aegis Ventures, says, quote, "I am pretty bullish on their ability to succeed with consumers. I'm less convinced on the enterprise side." Most of the millions of people turning to ChatGPT for health and wellness-related queries ask simple questions, like, "Why does my knee hurt while climbing the stairs?" Or, "What exercises will help maintain my bone density?" They use it to decode medical jargon, analyze lab reports, and understand the effects of medications. But others query it about strange symptoms that sometimes turn out to be serious illnesses.

Karan Singal, OpenAI's head of health AI, says, quote, "Today, health is one of the most active use cases of ChatGPT. There's the potential for good and the potential for harm, but the potential for good is so large." In the US, clinician shortages and administrative overload have left physicians burnt out and patients struggling to get the appointments they need. In rural areas, more than 1/3 of adults use the ER for care that could have been provided at a primary care practice, while 86% of rural counties don't have a single practicing cardiologist. For full coverage, check out Amy Feldman and Rashi Srivastava's piece on forbes.com.

This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.