When OpenAI wants to sell the country’s biggest health systems on its healthcare ambitions, it often brings in one person a hospital CEO won’t ignore: Sam Altman.

Altman, 41, is OpenAI’s billionaire cofounder, CEO and chief converter of skepticism into purchase orders. He has sold investors, boards of directors and governments on the idea that OpenAI is the engine of the next computing era. Now he is personally making that case to hospitals.

Altman's involvement in these sales calls underscores just how central healthcare is to OpenAI’s ambitions. In January, the AI behemoth announced eight major health systems, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and HCA Healthcare, are now customers of its enterprise-grade healthcare tools.

OpenAI has also tapped hundreds of doctors to make its health answers better for the more than 230 million people globally who turn to ChatGPT for advice every week. It’s rolling out a new version of ChatGPT for clinicians, as well as “ChatGPT Health,” a tab within the main app that allows consumers to securely connect their medical records and their wellness apps, such as Apple Health and MyFitnessPal (it’s waitlist-only currently). And its models power other health companies’ tools to create clinical notes and help consumers understand their lab results. OpenAI has rolled out three new products focused on healthcare in the past six months alone.

“It is one of our most important verticals at OpenAI,” says Nate Gross, who leads OpenAI’s healthcare strategy. Gross, who joined OpenAI in 2025, has an MD from the Emory University School of Medicine and an MBA from Harvard and previously cofounded $4 billion (market cap) healthcare network Doximity. While the company is also making a play for other big markets like education and finance, Gross says, “everyone experiences health issues and this is an opportunity to help everyone.”

“Health is one of our most important verticals at OpenAI.” OpenAI’s head of health Nate Gross

“Health is one of our most important verticals at OpenAI.”

Healthcare, after all, represents some 18% of the entire U.S. economy. And AI has huge potential to help consumers make better decisions about their health, aid doctors in providing better care and assist health systems in running their operations more efficiently—if it’s done right.

OpenAI’s sweeping push into healthcare comes at a make or break moment for the company. While OpenAI sparked the AI revolution with ChatGPT three years ago, it appears to have conceded some of its edge to fast-growing rivals like Anthropic and Google. The company brought in $13 billion in revenue in 2025, but its net loss reportedly ballooned nearly eight-fold to $39 billion last year from $5 billion in 2024. In April, OpenAI reportedly missed important revenue and user targets. The $852 billion-valued juggernaut filed confidentially to go public in June, but under pressure from investors is now said to be considering delaying its IPO until next year.

While the company won’t break out financial metrics for its healthcare operations in advance of its IPO, healthcare is clearly key to its future success.

But OpenAI will need to win out against Anthropic, which has been focused on enterprise from the start and has its own suite of healthcare products, as........

© Forbes