AI in Healthcare Weekly Report: Isomorphic Labs Raises $2.1B, Forus Secures Over $160M, and AI-Driven Healthcare Operations See Surge in Funding [260518]
Isomorphic Labs
AI Drug Developer
BranchLab
Artificial Intelligence Software Developer
Last week, globallyAI Medical Financing Not Limited to BusinessWire Conditions Page. Expanding to company official websites, PRNewswire, GlobeNewswire, and industry media, this week's newly added events cover multiple directions such as AI pharmaceuticals, drug accessibility networks, chronic disease management, hospital operations, medical payments, pharmaceutical commercialization, medical supply chains, patient communication, and cell biology experimental platforms.
The most core change this week is that capital is no longer just betting on"AI-assisted single-point tools" are now more focused on the complex process layers within the healthcare system: Isomorphic Labs is further scaling its AI drug design engine with a $21 billion investment, Forus is leveraging AI to打通医生、药房、支付方和药企之间的药物可及性链路, while projects like BranchLab, Aumet, Optura, and Anomaly are respectively targeting pharmaceutical commercialization, medical procurement, AI return on investment management, and payer intelligence. Meanwhile, early-stage projects such as Shyld AI, Chromie Health, Saile, and Ditto indicate that AI agents are entering more specific operational scenarios like hospital scheduling, infection control, physician credentialing, and patient communication follow-ups.
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Financing Events
Isomorphic Labs
Financing Amount:$2.1 billion
Round:Series B
Isomorphic Labs, headquartered in London, UK, is an AI drug discovery company incubated by Google DeepMind under Alphabet. Its core focus is to reconstruct the drug design process using AI models. On May 12, 2026, Isomorphic Labs announced the completion of a $2.1 billion Series B financing round led by Thrive Capital, with participation from Alphabet, GV, MGX, Temasek, CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund. The company is developing an AI drug design engine named IsoDDE, which is used to predict molecular structures, interactions, and the performance of drug candidates, while advancing its own pipeline and collaborative projects with large pharmaceutical companies. Its AI capabilities are inherited from the AlphaFold system, aiming to shift the heavily experiment-and-trial-dependent stages of early drug discovery into computational modeling and inference, thereby improving the efficiency of candidate drug screening, optimization, and preclinical development.
Forus
Financing Amount: Over$160 million
Round:Series B
Forus, headquartered in New York, USA, formerly known as Tandem, is an AI-driven drug accessibility network that connects doctors, pharmacies, payers, and biopharmaceutical companies to help patients gain faster access to appropriate treatments. On May 12, 2026, Forus announced it had completed over $160 million in financing, with investments from Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Redpoint, BoxGroup, and Pear VC. Forus integrates AI into physicians' workflows, automating key steps between prescription decisions and patient medication initiation, including insurance eligibility verification, prior authorization, appeals, patient assistance program matching, cost optimization, and pharmacy routing. Its core value lies in transforming the previously fragmented manual coordination processes across doctors’ offices, pharmacies, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical enterprises into an automated network, enabling innovative therapies to reach eligible patients more consistently.
9amHealth
Financing Amount:$26 million
Round:Series B
9amHealth, headquartered in San Diego, California, U.S., is an AI-powered virtual specialty care platform initially focused on cardiometabolic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia. On May 13, 2026, 9amHealth announced the completion of a $26 million Series B financing round led by Define Ventures, with participation from new investors including SemperVirens VC, Catalio Capital Management, and NewHealth Ventures. The company manages high-cost chronic disease populations for employers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers through clinical protocols, laboratory testing, medication management, and continuous care services. Its AI is primarily used for clinical workflows and personalized member experiences, enabling specialty care teams to serve complex chronic disease patients at a lower marginal cost while helping employers reduce pharmaceutical and healthcare spending.
BranchLab
Financing Amount:$26 million
Round:Series A
BranchLab, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, U.S., is an AI commercialization platform for pharmaceutical companies and healthcare organizations. Its core product, Pathwai, is used for patient and healthcare professional identification, audience activation, channel optimization, and real-world outcome measurement. On May 13, 2026, BranchLab announced the completion of a $26 million Series A financing round led by McKesson Ventures, with participation from FCA Venture Partners, Sanofi Ventures, and AIX Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to $35 million. BranchLab’s platform adopts a privacy-first AI architecture, enabling models to be trained within customer-controlled health data environments, while non-sensitive population and media signals are utilized for commercial execution. Its focus is on consolidating pharmaceutical companies' previously fragmented commercialization efforts—spread across multiple vendors, offline analyses, and manual processes—into a unified system, allowing teams to identify suitable patients and healthcare professionals more quickly and adjust outreach strategies in real time.
Optura
Financing Amount:$17.5 million
Round:Series A
Optura, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, is an AI Return on Investment (ROAI) management platform for healthcare enterprises. On May 14, 2026, Optura announced the completion of a $17.5 million Series A funding round led by Salesforce Ventures and Echo Health Ventures, with continued participation from Susa Ventures, Matrix Partners, and HC9 Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to over $25 million. Optura assists health plans, healthcare providers, and life sciences organizations in evaluating which AI use cases are worth investing in, mapping organizational data into a unified knowledge layer, and transforming the highest-priority use cases into AI agents within medical workflows. It addresses the management challenges post-AI implementation in healthcare: rather than continuously adding standalone AI tools, it helps leadership determine whether AI investments genuinely deliver business value and can be deployed at scale.
Anomaly Insights
Financing Amount:$17 million
Round: Additional Financing
Anomaly Insights, headquartered in New York, USA, is an AI payer intelligence platform for healthcare institutions. It primarily assists hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, and large healthcare service organizations in analyzing payer behaviors such as denials, underpayments, downgrades, recoupments, and delayed payments. On May 13, 2026, Anomaly announced it had secured $17 million in new funding, led by Sound Ventures with participation from Alumni Ventures and existing investors Link Ventures, Redesign Health, RRE Ventures, and others, bringing the company’s total funding to $34 million. Anomaly’s platform analyzes billions of medical transactions in real time, identifying patterns in payer behavior related to claims and contract execution, and applies these insights to revenue cycle management and contract negotiations. Its value lies in transforming payer behaviors—which were previously difficult for healthcare institutions to systematically track—into traceable, provable, and actionable data assets, helping institutions reduce revenue leakage and gain a stronger informational foundation when communicating with payers.
Shyld AI
Financing Amount:$13.4 million
Round:Seed
Shyld AI, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, is a medical technology company that introduces physical AI agents into hospital operations. On May 14, 2026, Shyld AI announced the completion of a $13.4 million seed funding round led by Aulis Capital. The company's Active AI system is designed for high-frequency scenarios such as operating room procedures, patient safety, compliance, and infection control, capable of real-time perception, reasoning, and task execution within the hospital’s physical environment. Its core model, VERTEX, is deployed on local devices, reducing reliance on cloud computing and hospital IT integration. The flagship solution combines AI with UV-C disinfection technology for automated hospital environment disinfection and operating room turnover optimization. Shyld AI's direction represents the trend of AI moving from "prompting and recording" to "real-time execution of hospital operational tasks."
Aumet
Financing Amount:$12 million
Round:Series A
Aumet, headquartered in Saudi Arabia, is an AI-first operating system for healthcare procurement and supply chain, serving pharmacies, hospitals, suppliers, and healthcare systems. On May 13, 2026, Aumet announced the completion of a $12 million Series A funding round led by Emkan Capital, with participation from Qatar Development Bank, SABAH VC, AAIC, and existing investors Shorooq Partners and Right Side Capital Management. Aumet’s platform covers inventory management, procurement automation, supplier matching, demand forecasting, and purchasing decision-making, and has connected a large number of pharmacies and pharmaceutical suppliers across the Middle East. Its AI value lies in integrating pricing, inventory, ordering, substitutes, and supplier performance in the healthcare supply chain into an actionable data layer, enabling hospitals and pharmacies to transition from reactive purchasing to intelligent replenishment and automated decision-making.
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Big Factory Dynamics
[Anthropic: Establishes $200 Million Collaboration with Gates Foundation to Advance Claude into Global Health and Life Sciences Public Goods]
On May 14, 2026, Anthropic announced a four-year, $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation, which includes funding, Claude usage credits, and technical support. The collaboration focuses on areas such as global health, life sciences, education, and economic mobility. In the healthcare sector, the two parties plan to support projects related to vaccine and therapy development, health data decision-making, public health datasets, and evaluation benchmarks. For the industry, the significance of this type of partnership goes beyond enabling non-profit organizations to access large model tools; it also integrates AI capabilities, engineering support, and public health scenarios, allowing low- and middle-income regions to participate in the development and validation of AI health tools.
[OpenAI: Update Sensitive Conversation Risk Identification Capability, Strengthen Safety Foundation for Health and Psychological Support Scenarios]
On May 14, 2026, OpenAI disclosed safety updates for ChatGPT in sensitive conversations, focusing on enhancing the model's ability to identify risk signals that gradually emerge in long-term dialogues. The new training and policy updates, developed with the participation of mental health experts, aim to enable the system to provide more cautious responses based on context when users express distress, crisis, or potential self-harm risks. For example, it may de-escalate dangerous content, refuse to provide specific harmful details, or guide users to seek help from trusted individuals and crisis resources. For AI-driven healthcare and health management products, this capability represents an infrastructure-level safety requirement, as an increasing number of users are turning to AI as the first point of contact for health, psychological, and life stress issues. The model must be able to recognize boundaries in unstructured, lengthy, and high-risk conversational contexts.
