OpenAI has acquired health tech startup Torch, with the four-person team joining the company to develop health and wellness features for ChatGPT. Torch co-founder Ilya Abyzov said the team will work to “build ChatGPT Health into the best AI tool in the world for health and wellness,” leveraging the startup’s expertise in aggregating personal medical data from hospitals, laboratories, wearables, and consumer health services into a single platform.
Abyzov described Torch’s technology as “a unified medical memory for AI, bringing every bit of data about you from hospitals, labs, wearables, and consumer testing companies into one place.” He added that feedback from beta users highlighted the product’s role in helping people better understand their health and make informed decisions.
Explaining the decision to join OpenAI, Abyzov said, “I can’t imagine a better next chapter than to now get to put our technology and ideas in the hands of the hundreds of millions of people who already use ChatGPT for health questions every week.” He also emphasized the importance of privacy and safety, stating, “We wouldn’t have taken it on if we didn’t think that OpenAI cared as much as we do about privacy, safety, collaboration with physicians, and building something at an extremely high level of craft and consumer polish.”
