OpenAI said that it will bring Torch together with its its recently launched healthcare feature, ChatGPT Health.
OpenAI acquires US start-up Torch for more than $100m, in its latest healthcare-focused move.
Founded in January 2025, Torch is building an app that unifies scattered health records for use with AI, to help users analyse and understand their medical information.
“We designed Torch to be a unified medical memory for AI, bringing every bit of data about you from hospitals, labs, wearables and consumer testing companies into one place,” Torch co-founder Ilya Abyzov said on X.
Announcing the acquisition, OpenAI said that it will bring Torch together with its recently launched healthcare feature, ChatGPT Health.
The focus of the dedicated service on ChatGPT aligns considerably with Torch’s objective – providing a way for users to upload their health records and converse with the chatbot to understand test results, prepare for appointments, and seek information on diet and workouts.
OpenAI has committed to making ChatGPT Health private, promising that the data uploaded and conversations had on the service will not be fed into the general-purpose ChatGPT, nor will they be used to train any of OpenAI’s foundational models.
According to the AI giant, more than 230m people use ChatGPT for health and wellness-related questions weekly.
“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,” Abyzov added.
He co-founded the company alongside Adrian Aoun, James Hamlin and Eugene Huang. Abyzov and Aoun previously founded health-tech Forward in 2016, where they met Hamlin and Huang.
Forward abruptly shut down business in 2024. The Information reported at the time that nearly 200 employees lost their jobs as a result.
In comments online, Abyzov said: “This isn’t the way we guessed it would happen, but making Torch a part of OpenAI means the mission we started at Forward is closer than ever.” Torch’s leadership and workforce are set to join OpenAI.
Earlier this week, Anthropic launched its own ‘Claude for Healthcare’, a dedicated set of tools under Claude for medical queries.
Updated, 11.40am, 13 January 2026: This article was amended to correct Torch’s founding date.
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