Kees Hertogh is Vice President of Public Sector & Healthcare Marketing at Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington. A Netherlands-born executive who joined Microsoft via the 2002 Navision acquisition, he has spent over two decades at the company rising from product management on Microsoft Dynamics AX through to VP-level leadership over the global marketing strategy for Microsoft's healthcare, life sciences, education, and government verticals. He is the primary public face of Microsoft Dragon Copilot - the AI clinical workflow assistant reaching 100,000+ clinicians - and a prolific industry blogger and conference speaker on responsible AI in healthcare.
Andrew Toy is the CEO and Board Member of Clover Health (NASDAQ: CLOV), a Medicare Advantage insurer using AI to help physicians identify and treat chronic conditions earlier. A Stanford-trained computer scientist who immigrated from Hong Kong at 16, Toy built Divide (acquired by Google for $120M in 2014), led Android Enterprise at Google, then joined Clover Health in 2018 as CTO before ascending to CEO in 2023. Under his leadership, Clover achieved 51% year-over-year membership growth and its first GAAP net income in Q1 2026, powered by the Clover Assistant AI platform that diagnoses diabetes three years earlier than conventional methods.
Carta Healthcare is a San Francisco health-tech company that pairs AI with expert nurse abstractors to pull clean, registry-ready data out of messy electronic medical records. Its Atlas and Lighthouse products cut abstraction costs by more than half while hitting 98-99% inter-rater reliability, freeing clinicians and hospitals from the slow, expensive grind of manual chart review.
Derek Chung is a software engineer at Abridge, the AI-powered clinical documentation company backed by Andreessen Horowitz with over $907M in total funding. A Stanford-trained computer scientist and accomplished concert pianist, he co-founded 88Keys to Cure, a nonprofit merging classical music with charitable causes, and has performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Hall, and Ravinia. His career sits at a rare intersection: elite competitive piano, rigorous CS training, and building technology that reduces clinician burnout at scale.
Gopalakrishna Kuppuswamy is Co-Founder and CTO of Cognida.ai, an enterprise AI company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that raised a $15M Series A from Nexus Venture Partners in February 2025. With 30+ years in technology - starting at CMC Limited in 1994 and spending a decade as VP at Hitachi Vantara - he now leads the engineering behind Zunō, Cognida's agentic AI platform that cuts enterprise AI deployment timelines from 6-8 months down to 10-12 weeks. Based in Hyderabad, he holds master's degrees from both the University of Hyderabad and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and has helped grow Cognida.ai to 250+ employees and $37.7M ARR.
Hamed Ahmadi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Medsien, a leading AI-powered remote care management company headquartered in San Francisco. A PhD mathematician turned Silicon Valley engineer turned healthcare entrepreneur, Ahmadi co-founded Medsien in 2018 alongside Sina Torabi with a mission to extend quality care beyond clinic walls to the 150 million Americans living with chronic conditions. Under his leadership, Medsien has grown to 110 employees, $12.7M in annual revenue, and raised $5.3M in funding, powering remote care programs for hundreds of healthcare organizations across the US.
Ian Christopher is the Co-Founder and Chief Engineer of Qventus, the AI-powered hospital operations platform backed by KKR and Bessemer Venture Partners. A Stanford-trained computational engineer, he co-built Qventus from a 2012 YC startup into a $400M+ company that automates how hospitals manage patient flow, surgical scheduling, and care coordination - reducing staff burnout and cutting length of stay for major health systems across the US.
Mudit Garg is the co-founder and CEO of Qventus, a Mountain View-based AI healthcare company that automates hospital operations — from surgical scheduling to patient discharge. Trained as an electrical engineer at IIT and holding an MBA from Stanford, Garg spent time at McKinsey's healthcare practice before founding Qventus in 2012. Under his leadership, the company raised a $105M Series D led by KKR in January 2025, reached a valuation of over $400 million, and has helped health systems across the US free up tens of thousands of excess hospital days and generate tens of millions in surgical revenue.
Nikhil Buduma is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ambience Healthcare, an ambient AI platform that automates clinical documentation, coding, and revenue integrity for health systems. A two-time International Biology Olympiad gold medalist, MIT-educated computer scientist, and author of O'Reilly's 'Fundamentals of Deep Learning,' Buduma built Ambience from the ground up - first by running a medical practice, then by creating the AI platform his clinicians needed. The company has raised $343M total, reached a $1.25B valuation after a $243M Series C in 2025, and built a platform that supports 100+ medical specialties across outpatient, emergency, and inpatient settings.
Pranay Kapadia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Notable, an AI-powered automation platform for healthcare that eliminates administrative burden for clinicians and health systems. Founded in 2017 after dinner-table conversations with six physician family members - including his psychiatrist wife who called herself 'the highest paid data collector in the world' - Notable has grown to serve 32 million patients across 12,000 sites of care, raised $119.2M in funding including a $100M Series B in 2021, and now automates over one million repetitive healthcare workflows daily. Before Notable, Kapadia helped build Mint.com at Intuit and was on the founding team at Blend, the mortgage fintech unicorn.
Shiv Rao is the CEO and co-founder of Abridge, the AI platform transforming clinical conversations into structured medical documentation. A practicing cardiologist at UPMC and history-major-turned-physician, Rao founded Abridge in 2018 out of personal frustration with nightly dictation sessions. The company, now valued at $5.3 billion after raising $300M in Series E in 2025, deploys across 150+ U.S. health systems including Mayo Clinic, Duke Health, and Johns Hopkins, supports 28 languages and 55 medical specialties, and is used by over 50,000 clinicians. Rao is equal parts cardiologist, technologist, and artist — a former DJ, skateboarder, and avant-garde music producer whose unconventional path runs straight through the operating room.
Brain Co. is a San Francisco-based enterprise AI company that deploys production-ready AI applications for the world's most complex, regulated industries - from government and healthcare to hospitality, energy, and supply chain. Founded by a constellation of Silicon Valley heavyweights including Elad Gil and Dan Ashton, and backed by an elite roster of investors including Patrick Collison, Reid Hoffman, and Andrej Karpathy, Brain Co. raised a $30M Series A in September 2025. Its core technology converts dense regulatory documents into executable rules engines that make AI decisions auditable and compliant - so that governments can permit faster, hospitals can care better, and supply chains can run leaner.
Viz.ai is an AI-powered care coordination platform trusted by over 2,000 hospitals across the United States. The company's suite of 50+ FDA-cleared algorithms analyzes medical imaging data in real time - detecting strokes, brain hemorrhages, aneurysms, pulmonary embolisms, and cardiac conditions - then instantly alerts the right clinical team so treatment can begin minutes faster. Founded in 2016 by neurosurgeon Dr. Chris Mansi and machine learning researcher Dr. David Golan, Viz.ai has grown into a platform covering 230 million lives, supporting 70,000+ healthcare providers, and partnering with 14+ leading pharmaceutical companies to accelerate drug development and patient access.
Barton Wells is the co-founder, CEO, and CTO of DexaFit Dx, a Palo Alto-based health technology company using AI and full-body DXA scans to detect coronary artery disease, Type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions early and non-invasively. A Stanford-trained mathematician and former world-ranked open water marathon swimmer, Wells brings 30+ years of AI, computer vision, and iOS engineering experience - spanning stints at Dropbox and multiple startups - to the challenge of transforming a 7-minute medical scan into a multi-disease risk screening platform for insurers, employers, and individuals.
Fedor Pak is the CEO of Chatfuel, the no-code AI chatbot platform trusted by 7 million businesses for over a billion monthly conversations on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. A serial entrepreneur who cut his teeth in Russian oil and gas before founding coin-machine networks, ride-hailing operations in Pakistan, and e-commerce ventures, Pak joined Chatfuel in October 2022 and has since steered the company from a chatbot builder into a full AI sales and engagement engine - Meta's top automation partner and a platform that saves clinic owners 30+ hours of admin per month.
Steve Herne is the CEO of Unlearn.AI, a San Francisco-based company building AI-powered digital twin technology to transform how clinical trials are designed and run. With over 25 years of experience across pharmaceutical R&D companies including WCG, Bioclinica, and Covance, Herne joined Unlearn in May 2024 as Chief Commercial Officer before ascending to CEO in September 2024. Under his leadership, Unlearn — backed by $130M+ in venture funding including a $50M Series C led by Altimeter Capital — is pivoting from research-led to commercially-driven product delivery, with its digital twin models now EMA-qualified and adopted by major biopharma companies to reduce placebo arm sizes by up to 38% in pivotal trials.
Ahmed Reza is the Founder and CEO of Yobi, an AI workforce platform that deploys synthetic agents to handle calls, texts, and social DMs for small businesses 24/7. A Milken Scholar at Cornell University who wrote image-processing software for NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Reza went from child actor in Bangladesh to homeless student to serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. His previous ventures include Call Sumo (call tracking analytics) and Dental Web Now (AI dental marketing, acquired by NPI). Yobi raised a $2.37M seed round in 2023, reached $2.4M ARR by late 2025, and in 2026 partnered with Microsoft to develop a private foundation model for predictive behavioral intelligence.
Anirudh Joshi is the co-founder and CEO of Valar Labs, a Palo Alto-based AI oncology company building tools that let doctors predict whether a specific cancer treatment will work before a patient wastes months on the wrong one. A biomedical engineer trained at Georgia Tech and Stanford, he previously built AI at Microsoft, PathAI, and Curai before co-founding Valar in 2021 with teammates from Stanford's AI in Medicine group. Valar raised $26M total, landing a $22M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz and DCVC in 2024, and its flagship test Vesta — predicting BCG therapy response in bladder cancer — is now live at 20 U.S. hospitals. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare 2025.
Nishith Khandwala (Nish) is the co-founder and CEO of Bunkerhill Health, a San Francisco-based AI company building the operating system for clinical action inside health systems. A Stanford computer scientist who started in AI labs with no healthcare background, he pivoted after physicians walked in with real clinical problems - and after his own father's heart attack forced him to ask why his coronary calcium AI wasn't reaching patients. Bunkerhill's Carebricks platform now powers 7+ clinical domains at major health systems including UTMB, HCA Florida, MedStar, and WVU Medicine. The company has raised $30.4M from Sequoia, Optum Ventures, and Y Combinator, earned multiple FDA clearances, and landed Nishith on Forbes 30 Under 30 and the inaugural Mayfield Divot AI List.
Will Yin is the co-founder and CEO of Mandolin, a San Francisco AI automation company building autonomous agents for specialty drug access. A Greenwich High School valedictorian and Stanford dropout, Yin previously co-founded Jupiter (YC-backed, $9M raised) before pivoting to healthcare. At Mandolin, he and co-founder Rohit Rustagi have raised $97M to automate the back-office workflows — prior auth, benefits verification, billing — that delay cancer and Alzheimer's patients from getting life-saving specialty therapies. Within months of launch, Mandolin deployed across 700+ clinics serving 250,000+ new patients annually.
Dan Ashton is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brain Co., a San Francisco-based AI company that builds applied intelligence platforms for the world's most complex institutions - from government permit offices to hospital systems. He brought his AI startup Serene AI into Brain Co.'s orbit and now leads a company backed by $30M in Series A funding from Elad Gil, Affinity Partners, Patrick Collison, Reid Hoffman, and Andrej Karpathy. Before Brain Co., he was an early operator at three unicorns - Opendoor, Faire, and Clubhouse - and a McKinsey consultant before that. Brain Co. has already deployed AI that unlocks $375M annually in permitting value and mitigated $100M+ in supply chain losses.
Fawad Butt is the co-founder and CEO of Penguin AI, a Palo Alto-based healthcare AI platform company that raised $29.7M in Series A funding in September 2025. A former Chief Data Officer at Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealthcare, and Optum, Butt spent years on the buyer side spending hundreds of millions on generic tech before deciding to build the solution healthcare actually needed. Penguin AI targets the $1 trillion annual administrative burden in US healthcare with purpose-built agentic AI, small language models, and digital workers that compress prior authorization reviews from 30 minutes to under two, positioning itself as 'the Epic of the healthcare back office.'
George Netscher is the Founder and CEO of SafelyYou, a San Francisco-based AI company that uses computer vision to prevent falls and elevate dementia care across senior living communities. Netscher launched the company in 2015 as doctoral research at UC Berkeley's AI Research Lab, driven by his family's direct experience with Alzheimer's disease - his grandmother and aunt both had the condition, and his mother cared for them while working as a physician. SafelyYou's ambient sensor platform now serves nearly 1,000 senior living communities, has raised over $134 million in total funding including a $43 million Series C in 2025, and has been shown to reduce falls by 40% and fall-related ER visits by up to 80%. In May 2025, Netscher was elected to the Argentum Board of Directors, the leading national senior living industry association.
Bob Rogers, PhD, is the co-founder and Chief Product & Technology Officer of Oii.ai, a San Francisco-based AI company that deploys probabilistic digital twins to optimize end-to-end supply chains. A Harvard-trained astrophysicist who once modeled supermassive black holes, Rogers pivoted through quantitative hedge funds, healthcare AI (co-founding Apixio, acquired by Centene), and Intel—where he led enterprise-scale AI as Chief Data Scientist—before channeling that eclectic career into Oii.ai's flagship platform Optii. A prolific author of four AI books and TechArena's 2024-2025 Voice of Innovation, Rogers is known for translating dense physics intuition into practical tools that let supply chain executives make real-time decisions instead of waiting weeks for reports.
Osman Ali Mian is an early-career AI researcher specializing in causal discovery and trustworthy machine learning. He completed his PhD magna cum laude at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (Saarland University, Germany) and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (IKIM) in Essen. He has published at top-tier venues including AAAI, ICML, AISTATS, and KDD, and won an Outstanding Paper Award at AAAI 2026 — marking him as a rising star in causal ML.
ZeroEntropy is the AI infrastructure company fixing the broken retrieval layer of modern AI applications. Founded in 2024 by Ghita Houir Alami (CEO) and Nicholas Pipitone (CTO), the San Francisco–based startup builds rerankers, embedding models, and end-to-end search infrastructure that outperforms Google, OpenAI, Cohere, and Voyage on public benchmarks. Backed by Y Combinator (W25) and a $4.2M seed round led by Initialized Capital, ZeroEntropy's products — zerank-2, zembed-1, zsearch, and ze-onprem — are used by enterprises including Assembled (serving Stripe, Canva, Robinhood, and Notion). The company's proprietary zELO training methodology, derived from chess Elo ratings and the Thurstone statistical model, produces models with calibrated relevance judgments that binary labels cannot replicate.