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Oscar Health became a $10B company despite early skepticism
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Oscar Health was Thrive’s *1st* investment, co-founded by @JoshuaKushner & Mario Schlosser (@mariots). $OSCR went public in 2021 & at one point was down 95%. Today, it’s a ~$10B company: Thrive Capital’s Dr. Nworah Ayogu originally told them it was a bad idea: “I was a know-it-all med student at the time.” “I told them, ‘This is a bad idea. The last health insurer created was in 1977, UnitedHealthcare. It was pre-internet. You can't just make a new health insurer. It's not a thing that's…
Molly O’Shea@MollySOShea14h ago
NEW: Inside Thrive Capital w/ Partner Dr. Nworah Ayogu Investing in Neuralink, OpenAI, Isomorphic Labs, OpenEvidence, Oscar Health & the next trillion-dollar healthcare companies. @ThriveCapital manages $65B+ in AUM, having raised $10B+ for Thrive X earlier this year. Healthcare has been part of the firm's DNA since inception, with Josh Kushner incubating Oscar Health alongside Thrive itself. The firm has incubated ~10 healthcare companies, the majority valued at over $1B, including Oscar Health, Cedar, Rightway & Cadence. I sat down with Nworah (@nworahayogu), a Harvard-trained, board-certified physician & neuroscientist, former Amazon Clinic GM & Amazon Pharmacy's first Chief Medical Officer, to break down AI's next frontier in medicine. We cover: ›› Isomorphic Labs: Demis Hassabis, AI-designed drugs & the race to compress drug development from 10 years to 4 ›› Neuralink: $9B last funding valuation, brain implants, surgical robotics & restoring independence to patients with paralysis ›› OpenEvidence: $15B valuation, ~$300M annualized revenue & adoption by more than 65% of US physicians. Why AI could create 10X doctors ›› OpenAI: Why healthcare could become AI's most important use case, from clinical reasoning to personalized medicine Thrive's thesis: Building companies that are world-class in both technology & medicine, with investments spanning Chai Discovery, Formation Bio, Nudge, Fortell, Nourish & more “Because as a nation, I think we need a 10X nurse a lot more than we need a 10X engineer.” 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Dr. Nworah Ayogu, Partner at Thrive Capital (01:52) The next AI trade is hiding in biotech (03:48) How AI designs a new drug (08:37) 9 out of 10 drugs fail, can AI flip that? (11:33) How Thrive got into Isomorphic Labs (14:14) Giving paralyzed veterans their hands back (20:39) Neuralink is more interesting than SpaceX (23:21) The hearing aid that broke the rating scale (30:18) The doctor who built Amazon Health (33:21) Why AGI makes healthcare the biggest bet (35:25) One cancer drug outearns every AI lab combined (37:55) How Lilly became healthcare's first $1T company (40:04) How Thrive helped OpenAI break into healthcare (44:13) OpenEvidence: 2/3 of US doctors in 3 years (46:16) Healthcare is 6x bigger than defense (48:15) $40T spent, zero gain in life expectancy (51:43) A custom gene therapy built for one baby (55:47) Saving Medicare $2.5M a week (1:04:13) Oscar's comeback from down 95% to up`1 100% (1:06:19) Why OpenAI is now a giant healthcare provider
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