The intersection of AI and healthcare has been getting massive attention from investors—and rightfully so, says Peter Shalek.
“I think this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” said Shalek, cofounder and CEO of Valerie Health. “Software, at its best, takes complexity away from the end user that benefits their customers. It creates new experiences, and that hasn’t happened in the last 30 years… Over the next ten years, the experience of going to the doctor will change.”
To meet the moment, Shalek—who co-founded digital mental health startup Joyable, which was sold to AbleTo—teamed up with Nitin Joshi, cofounder of Uber Health and Stripe engineering leader to start Valerie Health in 2023. Valerie, Shalek says, is “an AI front office” for independent doctors’ offices.
“All the space that sits between the patient and provider, we’re taking that over and automating as much as possible,” Shalek said. “We automate referrals, we automate faxes, we automate scheduling. But over time, we’re building out a comprehensive platform that can really manage the entire workflow from front to back.”
Valerie Health—named with Shalek and Joshi’s children’s initials—has raised its $30 million Series A, led by Redpoint Ventures, Fortune has exclusively learned. General Catalyst, Primary Ventures, BoxGroup, and Karman Ventures participated in the round, along with 406 Ventures and Waybury Capital. Angels included executives from One Medical, Oscar, Main Street Health, and DoorDash. Valerie has now raised $39 million.
“The future of healthcare is personalized and proactive,” said Meera Clark, partner at Redpoint Ventures. “Think about the ability to shift an appointment time or get that next appointment on the books—imagine a system has context to reach out to me and schedule based on my preferences, knows my healthcare needs, and knows my risk profile, what I might need to be screening for. You really need a foundation in place to be that proactive and personalized, and Valerie is laying that foundation.”
To Shalek, this isn’t just about a tech-enabled future, it’s the hope for better healthcare overall.
“We live in the U.S., with the best medical care in the world,” said Shalek. “We have incredible therapeutics, incredible diagnostics, incredible surgical capabilities—and yet, we have very mediocre average healthcare. The gap is about getting patients the right care that they need. It’s about democratizing healthcare, not just care for the healthiest and wealthiest people, which is too often what happens.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Venture Deals
- Link Cell Therapies, South San Francisco, Calif.-based oncology cell therapy company, launched from stealth with $60 million in Series A funding. Johnson & Johnson Innovation led the round, and was joined by Samsara BioCapital, Sheatree Capital, and Wing Venture Capital.
- AIR, an AI-powered credit intelligence startup, raised $6.1 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Work-Bench Ventures and Lerer Hippeau.
- Auxira Health, Columbia, Md.-based virtual cardiology company, raised $7.8 million in seed funding. Route 66 Ventures and Abundant Venture Partners led the round, and were joined by DigiTx Partners, American Heart Association Ventures, Ensemble Innovation Ventures, and City Light Capital.
- Soverli, a Zurich, Switzerland-based smartphone cybersecurity company, raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding. Founderful led the round and was joined by the ETH Zurich Foundation and Venture Kick.
Private Equity
- Godspeed Capital agreed to make a strategic investment in NextPoint Group, a Herndon, Va-based technology solutions provider for the intelligence and defense communities. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
IPOs
- Wealthfront, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based financial platform, is going public today with an offering of 34.6 million shares priced at $14 a share.
Funds + Funds of Funds
- Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based multi-stage venture capital firm, raised $9 billion in capital across six vehicles.
- Dragoneer Investment Group, a San Francisco-based investment firm, raised $4.3 billion for its seventh venture capital fund.
Exits
- Freshworks agreed to acquire FireHydrant, a New York-based AI-enabled incident management startup. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
- NVIDIA agreed to acquire SchedMD, a Lehi, Utah-based developer of open-source workload management system Slurm.
Fortune AIQ: The year in AI–and what’s ahead
Businesses took big steps forward on the AI journey in 2025, from hiring Chief AI Officers to experimenting with AI agents. The lessons learned—both good and bad–combined with the technology's latest innovations will make 2026 another decisive year. Explore all of Fortune AIQ, and read the latest playbook below:
–The 3 trends that dominated companies’ AI rollouts in 2025.
–2025 was the year of agentic AI. How did we do?
–AI coding tools exploded in 2025. The first security exploits show what could go wrong.
–The big AI New Year’s resolution for businesses in 2026: ROI.
–Businesses face a confusing patchwork of AI policy and rules. Is clarity on the horizon?
