Abridge expands medical AI platform with backing from Lilly and NVIDIA

Abridge announced Thursday that it has received a strategic investment from Eli Lilly and is expanding its medical AI platform beyond automated clinical notes. The move matters because the company is trying to turn doctor-patient conversations into infrastructure for billing, care decisions, insurance review and drug-trial recruitment.

Fortune reported that Abridge cofounder Dr. Shiv Rao presented the plan to health system executives in New York. Abridge describes the product as an AI-native clinician intelligence platform that records clinical conversations and uses them to generate documentation and other workflow outputs.

According to Abridge, more than 300 health systems use its platform, including Northwestern Medicine, Emory Healthcare and Johns Hopkins. Abridge says the platform supports more than 100 million clinical conversations a year and reaches more than 250 million patients.

The company’s existing technology listens to visits in real time and produces clinical notes, billing codes and patient summaries, Fortune reported. Abridge says the expanded platform can also show doctors prior context and gaps in care before an appointment, suggest topics and relevant clinical guidelines during the encounter, and create documentation, flowsheets and orders afterward based on what was said in the room.

Rao told Fortune that Abridge’s goal is to connect major parts of the health care system and improve how care is delivered, experienced and paid for. He also told Fortune that clinical trials are an early area the company wants to explore with Eli Lilly.

Eli Lilly’s investment amount was not disclosed in the Fortune report. Fortune noted that Lilly has separately announced a partnership with NVIDIA to build what the drugmaker called the industry’s most powerful AI supercomputer for medicine discovery and delivery.

NVIDIA is also deepening its work with Abridge. NVIDIA said Thursday that it is working with the startup on what the companies call the first foundation model designed specifically for clinical conversations, rather than a general-purpose large language model adapted for medical use.

Abridge also announced a partnership with Artisight, a smart-hospital company backed by NVIDIA. Fortune reported that Artisight uses computer vision for patient monitoring and nursing workflows, and that the partnership is intended to combine hospital room sensor data with ambient documentation over a patient’s stay.

The startup has significant investor backing. According to Sacra data cited by Fortune, Abridge has raised about $1.1 billion, including a $316 million Series E extension in April 2026. Fierce Healthcare reported that the company was valued at $5.3 billion, and Abridge has said NVIDIA’s venture arm, NVentures, is among its investors.

The market is crowded. SNS Insider valued the ambient clinical intelligence market at $7.24 billion in 2025 and projected it would reach $56.61 billion by 2035. Microsoft is a major incumbent after buying Nuance for $19.7 billion in 2022, while Fortune identified Ambience Healthcare, Suki and Nabla as funded rivals.

The expansion also raises compliance and liability issues. Fortune reported that ambient AI tools can require security reviews, state-specific patient consent and business associate agreements covering audio storage. Fortune also noted that AI-generated notes can become part of the permanent medical record if approved by clinicians, increasing the stakes as Abridge moves into billing codes and clinical orders.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.