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AI startup OpenEvidence is raising a fresh round of capital from Sequoia to scale its chatbot for doctors. 

The new $75 million cash injection, which has not been previously reported, values OpenEvidence at $1 billion, the two companies told CNBC. 

OpenEvidence, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded by Daniel Nadler. He previously built Kensho Technologies, a Wall Street-focused artificial intelligence firm that sold to Standard & Poor’s for $700 million in 2018. 

Nadler’s newest AI venture is a chatbot for physicians that helps them make better decisions at the point of care. The company claims it’s already being used by a quarter of doctors in the U.S. 

Following his sale of Kensho, Nadler self-funded OpenEvidence in 2021 before raising a friends and family round in 2023. The funding from Sequoia represents the first round led by an institutional investor and brings the company’s total amount raised to more than $100 million.

The company will also use the funding to forge strategic content partnerships, OpenEvidence said. In addition to the funding, OpenEvidence announced that The New England Journal of Medicine has become a content partner, meaning clinicians using OpenEvidence can benefit from content sourced from NEJM Group journals.

The founder describes OpenEvidence as an AI copilot. While the experience may feel similar to ChatGPT, OpenEvidence is a “very different organism” due to the data it was trained on, Nadler said. 

“Trust matters in medicine, and the fact that it’s trained on The New England Journal of Medicine, the fact that it’s built from the ground up for doctors — the result is a black-and-white difference in terms of accuracy,” Nadler told CNBC.

The company has licensing agreements with peer-reviewed medical journals, and OpenEvidence’s model was not connected to the public internet while trained, Nadler said. Using tailored data helped OpenEvidence avoid the pitfalls of “hallucination,” which is a phenomenon where AI will generate inaccurate, sometimes nonsensical answers to a query.

Meet OpenEvidence, the 'ChatGPT' for verified doctors

OpenEvidence offers its chatbot for free and makes money off of advertising. The product has grown organically thanks to word of mouth between doctors, Nadler said.

“Doctors work very close quarters with one another, especially on the floor in hospitals,” he said. “When one doctor pulls out their iPhone and looks at something, other doctors can see that. Their natural question is, ‘What’s that?'” 

That level of organic growth was an alluring factor for Sequoia partner Pat Grady, who led the firm’s investment. Sequoia is best known for early investments in Nvidia, Apple, YouTube, Stripe, SpaceX and Airbnb.

“This is a consumer internet company masquerading as a health-care business,” Grady told CNBC, saying OpenEvidence is easy for doctors to adopt. “When they have a couple of good experiences with it, it sticks. There aren’t a lot of products in health care that get adopted the way that a consumer internet company might.”

OpenEvidence is the latest in a flood of Silicon Valley artificial intelligence deals. 

The booming sector accounted for 1 in 4 venture dollars raised by startups last year, according to CB Insights. Health care has stood out as a high-potential area for the application of AI. Investors and founders have seen the technology’s ability to sift through large amounts of data, and its potential to transform everything from drug discovery to medical imaging.

“There are a lot of great ideas in health care, but it is such a complex system,” Grady said. “It’s really hard to cut through layer upon layer upon layer.” 

While AI has the potential for health-care breakthroughs, there are also worries about the risks. Industry leaders have voiced concern about a “doomsday” scenario where the technology leads to a catastrophic outcome for humanity, and on the smaller scale, others worry about job displacement.

OpenEvidence’s Nadler said he thinks the health-care use cases are the antidote, and represent the upside potential of AI. He highlighted doctor burnout and projections of an almost 100,000 physician shortfall by the end of the decade. 

“There’s this big question that’s on everybody’s mind right now, is AI actually going to be good for humanity or not?” Nadler said. “I think it is, inarguably, going to be good.”

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Trump says he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after China tariff rollback

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Trump says he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after China tariff rollback

Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.

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President Donald Trump said Monday that he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after the U.S. and China agreed to suspend most tariffs for 90 days.

Wall Street and Apple investors cheered the pause on Chinese tariffs. Apple stock was up 6% in trading on Monday, versus 3% for the Nasdaq.

“I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.”

Apple previously said in February it would spend $500 billion to expand many of its operations in the U.S., including assembling AI servers in Houston.

Any cooling of a U.S.-China trade war is expected to boost Apple, which does the majority of its device production in the country, and also counts the region as its third-largest by sales.

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Still, it’s not clear how much Monday’s announcement immediately helped Apple.

In April, most of Apple’s most important products, such as smartphones and computers, received exemptions on some of the highest 145% tariffs, but there are still 30% tariffs on Chinese imports even after Sunday’s deal. Apple still faces 10% tariffs in some of its secondary production locations, such as India and Vietnam.

The Trump administration wants Apple to bring device production, including iPhone manufacturing, to the United States, a move that many experts believe would be unlikely and expensive.

Earlier this month, Cook told investors about the company’s tariff strategy on an earnings call. He said that Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but didn’t want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation “difficult to predict.”

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

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U.S.-China breakthrough send tech and chip stocks soaring

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U.S.-China breakthrough send tech and chip stocks soaring

HANGZHOU, CHINA – JUNE 3, 2024 – The NVIDIA logo and the Apple logo are pictured in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, China, June 6, 2024. On June 5, Eastern time, Nvidia’s stock market value exceeded $3 trillion, officially surpassing Apple’s market value and becoming the world’s second largest technology giant by market value. It is worth noting that in just over 3 months, Nvidia’s market value soared from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

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Global technology and chip stocks rallied on Monday after the U.S. and China agreed to pause most tariffs on each other’s goods.

Technology stocks — such as semiconductor firms and smartphone makers — have been hit hard as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies threatened to disrupt supply chains and hurt some of the biggest U.S. businesses.

But investors breathed a sigh of relief after talks between the U.S. and China over the weekend yielded a temporary pause in “reciprocal” tariffs.

In the U.S., Nvidia, which still faces a number of restrictions on the chips it is allowed to ship to China, was around 4% higher in premarket trade, while AMD was up 5%. Broadcom was also around 5% higher, along with Qualcomm.

Other companies in the semiconductor supply chain also jumped. Marvell, which last week postponed a previously scheduled investor day due to macroeconomic uncertainty, surged 7.5% in premarket trade.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chipmaker, saw its U.S.-listed shares jump around 4% in the premarket. TSMC’s Taiwan-listed stock closed before the tariff announcement.

In Europe, ASML, a supplier of critical machinery required to manufacture the most advanced chips, rallied 4.5% in early trade. Infineon was also sharply higher.

Semiconductors and some electronics received an exemption from President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs last month, but the U.S. signaled the reprieve was temporary and that these products could still be in line for special duties.

Investors have been concerned about the impact on major tech stocks, especially those with exposure to China such as Apple and Amazon, whose shares have been under pressure this year.

Apple, which still makes 90% of its iPhones in China, said during its earnings report this month that it expects tariffs will add $900 million to its costs for the current quarter. Apple shares were more than 7% higher.

Amazon was up more than 8% in premarket trade Monday. Many sellers on Amazon rely on Chinese products.

U.S.-listed Chinese tech stocks also surged. Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com were higher, alongside internet firm Baidu.

“With US/China clearly on an accelerated path for a broader deal we believe new highs for the market and tech stocks are now on the table in 2025 as investors will likely focus on the next steps in these trade discussions which will happen over the coming months,” Daniel Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Monday.

“This morning is a huge win for the bulls and a best case scenario post this weekend in our view.”

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Google agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion data privacy settlement

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Google agrees to pay Texas .4 billion data privacy settlement

A Google corporate logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City on March 11, 2025.

Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the data privacy rights of state residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.

The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.

Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.

Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

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