OpenAI Group PBC has announced today the acquisition of Torch Health Inc., a health technology startup focused on consolidating personal medical data. This move is part of the AI company's broader efforts to expand into health-related applications.
The financial terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, with varying reports on the payment amount. The Information reported the acquisition price to be "around $100 million," while CNBC estimated it at "approximately $60 million."
Founded in 2024, Torch offers an AI-powered health application designed to integrate fragmented medical information from multiple sources, including healthcare providers, diagnostic labs, and personal health data.
The platform aggregates medical data such as lab results, prescriptions, diagnoses, and treatment histories into a single, standardized view. This aims to reduce record fragmentation, which can lead to patients and clinicians relying on incomplete or outdated information.
The application also captures and organizes often overlooked or underutilized unstructured health information. This includes audio recordings or summaries of doctor visits, care notes, and contextual memos, storing this data alongside clinical records to help maintain continuity across appointments and providers.
Under the hood, Torch utilizes AI to make the aggregated information more accessible and usable. This includes the ability to summarize complex medical data, identify patterns over time, and present information in a more user-friendly format.
In a post on X, OpenAI stated that combining Torch with ChatGPT Health "opens up a new way to understand and manage health."
This acquisition aligns with OpenAI's broader initiative to make ChatGPT more useful in specialized domains. The strategy involves allowing it to leverage structured, user-authorized data, moving beyond reliance solely on general-purpose models and conversational inputs.
The transaction follows less than a week after OpenAI previewed ChatGPT Health, a new service that, once fully launched, will support a wide range of health-related prompts. The service promises to allow users to interpret lab results, create exercise plans, and suggest questions to ask during medical appointments.
The acquisition of Torch will accelerate the development of ChatGPT Health by providing OpenAI with technology and expertise designed to securely connect AI systems with personal health records. The deal also signals OpenAI's positioning for a larger role in consumer-facing health tools while laying the groundwork for future collaborations with healthcare providers and platforms.
"We founded Torch to build a medical memory for AI, unifying scattered records into a contextual engine that helps you see the full picture, connect the dots, and ensure no critical information gets lost in the noise," said Torch's founders on their website. "Now, we're joining OpenAI to realize this vision at a scale we couldn't achieve alone."
