Hippocratic AI

Hippocratic AI is one of the larger health care AI startups to grow up in Palo Alto in the 2020s. It builds software agents that call patients on the phone, ask questions, answer routine ones and pass urgent issues to nurses or doctors. Its customers are hospitals, health insurers and drug and device makers. Patients never buy anything from it directly.

The company was founded in 2023. Its first listed company value is "Do No Harm," the principle long tied to the Hippocratic oath. Its press releases through 2026 carry a Palo Alto dateline. It does not publish a street address. This profile uses the company's own statements, its press releases and reporting by Fierce Healthcare. Claims about how well its models perform are the company's own and are labeled that way.

What Hippocratic AI does

A large share of health care work is talking to patients between visits. Someone has to call after a discharge, remind a patient about a test, check that a new prescription was filled or explain what an insurance plan covers. Health systems have long struggled to staff those calls. Hippocratic AI's pitch is that a voice agent can make many of them, at any hour and in a patient's own language. When something sounds wrong, the agent is supposed to hand the patient to a human

The company sells to three groups.

• Health systems. Use cases named by Fierce Healthcare include patient intake screening, chronic care management and follow-up after a hospital stay.
• Health insurers. Examples include eligibility checks and medication reconciliation, meaning a review of what a member is taking.
• Life sciences companies. Drug and device makers use agents for clinical trial pre-screening and patient education.

The company's site sorts its products into two groups. Skills are individual tasks an agent can do. Orchestrators coordinate those skills. In August 2026 it announced what it called a new generation of agents, orchestrators focused on outcomes rather than single tasks, meant to coordinate several agents around one patient goal. In July 2026 it also announced agents for extreme heat events that call at-risk patients when temperatures spike.

The company says its agents are not built to diagnose. It describes them as non-diagnostic and designed to escalate to clinicians.

Founders and founding

Hippocratic AI's team page lists four co-founders.

• Munjal Shah, chief executive. He previously co-founded Like.com, an AI shopping site sold to Google. Before that he co-founded Andale, sold to Alibaba. Fierce Healthcare notes he also founded Health IQ.
• Dr. Meenesh Bhimani, chief medical officer. The company describes more than 20 years as a hospital executive and emergency physician. He was most recently chief operating officer at El Camino Health, the system that runs El Camino Hospital in Mountain View.
• Vishal Parikh, chief product officer. He leads product and engineering, including the Polaris models. The company says he holds a master's degree from Stanford.
• Subho Mukherjee, chief science officer.

The company launched publicly in 2023. Fierce Healthcare reports that its patient-facing agents became commercially available in June 2024.

Its values page sets out a few rituals that stand out for a software company. New hires take an oath to put product safety first. Each employee is offered a bracelet that can be engraved with the name of someone whose health journey inspires them. Staff are encouraged to pick an underserved community to advocate for while they work there.

Funding as reported

The table covers rounds as reported in the press and in the company's announcements. Valuations are post-money figures as reported.

Fierce Healthcare reported that the Series C brought total funding to $404 million. Backers named in that round included CapitalG, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Premji Invest and John Doerr. Three health systems also invested: Universal Health Services, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and WellSpan Health.

Several of those investors work a short drive from Palo Alto. Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz both have offices on Sand Hill Road. Our guide to AI investors on the Peninsula covers how firms there have shifted money toward AI since 2022.

The Polaris models

Hippocratic AI trains its own family of language models, called Polaris, for health care conversations. The company has released several versions.

1. Polaris 3.0, March 2025. The company described it as a 4.2 trillion parameter suite of 22 models.
2. Polaris 5.0, April 30, 2026. The company describes it as a 5 trillion parameter "constellation" built around a 700 billion parameter core model.

In its Polaris 5.0 announcement, the company said the model outperformed leading voice-capable models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google across more than 50 benchmarks on clinical, regulatory and conversational tasks. Those are the company's own comparisons. It also listed new skills such as cough detection, drug safety checks, specialty scheduling and escalation for signs of suicidal thinking or child protection concerns.

The company has repeatedly put numbers on its call volume. Fierce Healthcare reported in November 2025 that the company counted more than 115 million clinical patient interactions with no safety issues reported, by the company's account. In April 2026 Shah said Polaris 5.0 was built on more than 180 million real-world patient interactions.

Deals and growth in 2026

The company's press page lists a steady run of announcements in 2026. A few give a sense of its direction.

• January 12, 2026. It announced the purchase of Grove AI, a company working with clinical trials, as part of a push into life sciences.
• January 2026. It announced collaborations with the consulting firms BCG and Huron.
• April 30, 2026. Polaris 5.0 launched.
• June 2026. It started an LLM model training residency for engineers.
• July 30, 2026. WellSpan Health expanded its partnership with the company.
• August 13, 2026. The orchestrator product line was announced.

It also runs grants for nurses interested in AI. In November 2025 it announced $30,000 in grants for that program. Fierce Healthcare reported more than 50 large health system, payer and pharma clients in six countries at the time of the Series C.

Ties to Palo Alto and Stanford

Hippocratic AI fits a long local pattern of health technology companies growing next to Stanford Medicine. Palo Alto is home to Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. That gives a health care startup a deep pool of physicians, nurses and administrators to hire and advise it. Our page on Stanford Hospital covers the medical center itself.

The team page shows those links. Vishal Parikh studied at Stanford. Other leaders list training or roles at Stanford, including Stanford's Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Imaging. Meenesh Bhimani came from El Camino Health in Mountain View. The investor list leans on Sand Hill Road firms. John Doerr, who personally invested, is the longtime Kleiner Perkins partner.

The company also sits in a busy local field. Other health AI companies, from documentation tools to imaging software, have offices on the Peninsula. Our Palo Alto companies guide lists more firms with a local chapter.

Visiting and practical notes

For a look at the broader health care scene, the Stanford Medicine campus along Welch Road and Pasteur Drive is the main landmark. Visitors to the medical center can use our Stanford Hospital visitor guide for parking and access.

Frequently asked questions