The eponymous sign outside Epic headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin.
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Epic Systems, the largest provider of software for managing medical records, says a venture-backed startup called Particle Health is using patient data in unauthorized and unethical ways that have nothing to do with treatment.
Epic told customers in a notice on Thursday that it cut off its connection to Particle, hindering the company’s ability to tap a system with more than 300 million patient records. Particle is one of several companies that acts as a sort of middleman between Epic and the organizations — typically hospitals and clinics — that need the data.
Patient data is inherently sensitive and valuable, and it’s protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, a federal law that requires a patient’s consent or knowledge for third-party access. One way Epic’s electronic health records (EHR) are accessed is through an interoperability network called Carequality, which facilitates the exchange of more than 400,000 documents a month, according to its website. Particle is a member of the Carequality network.
To join the network, organizations are vetted and have to agree to abide by clear “Permitted Purposes” for the exchange of patient data. Epic responds to requests for data that fall under the “Treatment” permitted purpose, which means the recipient is providing care to the person whose records they are requesting.
Epic said in its notice on Thursday that it filed a formal dispute with Carequality on March 21, over concerns that Particle and its participant organizations “might be inaccurately representing the purpose associated with their record retrievals.” The company suspended its connection with Particle that day.
“This poses potential security and privacy risks, including the potential for HIPAA Privacy Rule violations,” Epic said in the notice, which was obtained by CNBC.
In a blog post late Friday, Carequality said it takes disputes “very seriously and is committed to maintaining the integrity of the dispute resolution process as well as trusted exchange within the framework.” The organization said it can’t comment about the existence of any disputes or member activities.
Representatives from Epic and Particle didn’t respond to requests for comment. However, Particle published a blog post Friday evening and said it began “addressing this issue immediately” after Epic “stopped responding to data requests from a subset of customers” on March 21. Particle said in the post that a big challenge in such matters is that there is “no standard reference to assess the definition of Treatment.”
“These definitions have become more difficult to delineate as care becomes more complicated with providers, payers, and payviders all merging in various large healthcare conglomerates,” Particle wrote.
Epic, a 45-year-old privately held company based in Wisconsin, isthe largest EHR vendor by hospital market share in the U.S., with 36% of the market, according to a May report from KLAS Research. Oracle is second at 25%, following the software company’s $28 billion purchase of Cerner in 2022.
As of July 2022, Particle had raised a total of $39.3 million from investors including Menlo Ventures, Story Ventures and Pruven Capital, according to a release. The New York-based startup said at the time that its technology “uniquely combines data from 270 million plus patients’ medical records by aggregating and unifying healthcare records from thousands of sources.”
Epic said Particle introduced thousands of new participant connections to Carequality in October, and asserted that they fell under the treatment use case. In the following months, all of Particle’s participant organizations claimed a permitted purpose of treatment for their requests, Epic said.
‘Non-treatment use case’
However, Epic began to notice some red flags. The company said it observed anomalies in the patient record exchange patterns, like requests for large numbers of records within a certain geographical region. Additionally, Epic said that the companies connected to Particle weren’t sending new data back from patients, which “suggests a non-treatment use case.”
Epic and its Care Everywhere Governing Council, consisting of 15 industry representatives, evaluated Particle’s new participant connections and determined that organizations like Integritort, MDPortals and Reveleer, which acquired MDPortals last year, “likely didn’t conform to a Treatment Permitted Purpose,” the notice said.
Epic said it learned that another Carequality member was planning to file a dispute, alleging that Integritort was using the patient data to try and identify potential class action lawsuit participants. On March 28, Epic said it discovered that a participant called Novellia claimed it was requesting records under treatment, despite publicly advertising its product as a “personal health tool.”
Integritort, Reveleer and Novellia didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Epic said it filed a formal dispute with Carequality at the Governing Council’s recommendation. On April 4, Epic asked Particle to provide additional information to illustrate how its participants qualify for the treatment use case, according to the notice.
Michael Marchant, director of interoperability and innovation at University of California Davis Health, serves as the chair of Epic’s Governing Council. He said it’s hard to know exactly why Particle might have provided these organizations with records, or whether it intentionally engaged in wrongdoing. But, he said, companies have to act responsibly even if pressured to deliver financial results.
“If they were selling to things that they knew were not treatment-related organizations in an effort to match VC funding or profit margins or revenue targets or what have you, then that would be really bad,” Marchant told CNBC in an interview.
In a statement on LinkedIn Wednesday, Particle founder Troy Bannister said Epic acted unilaterally, and that Particle has not seen “rationale, justification or official claims” surrounding these issues.
Bannister wrote that, to the company’s knowledge, “all of the affected partners directly support treatment.” He said these organizations pull data for care providers and share data back with the Carequality network.
“While we continue maintaining our connection with Carequality, the ability for one implementor to decide, without evidence or even so much as a warning, to disconnect providers at massive scale, jeopardizes clinical operations for hundreds of thousands of patients as well as the trust that is so critical to a trust-based exchange,” Bannister wrote.
Bannister didn’t address Epic’s April 4 request for additional information.
The formal dispute process is still ongoing. Marchant, who also serves as the co-chair of an advisory council at Carequality, said it’s the first time in the network’s history that a complaint has gotten this far.
TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.
Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.
TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.
“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”
Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.
“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.
But there may a dark side to this growth.
As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.
“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”
Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.
“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”
Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.
While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.
Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
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Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
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Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.