AI Will Fix Healthcare, But It Needs Help: Announcing Garner's Series E

U.S. healthcare is at a crossroads. Our sector is now the fastest adopter of AI of any industry in the country — yet this massive technology acceleration is not on track to solve the underlying problems in our healthcare system. U.S. life expectancy relative to our developed-world peers is at an all-time low and getting worse. Healthcare costs are rising faster than ever, with employer medical costs growing 9% this year alone.

And unfortunately it looks like AI is currently making this worse, not better: providers are already using AI to code claims more aggressively and drive up payment for the same care, and as AI models begin serving ads to the highest-bidder, the information patients rely on will get less trustworthy, not more. Against that backdrop, the mission we have been working on at Garner has never been more important — and accelerating it has never been more urgent. 

That is why, today, we are announcing that Garner has closed a $100 million Series E led by Index Ventures at a $2.74 billion valuation, with continued participation from Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, Thrive, Sequoia, Founders Fund, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

At its core, the U.S. healthcare system is broken for a simple reason: it lacks the consumer information and incentives that exist in every other functioning market. Patients do not know which doctors deliver the best outcomes, and they have no financial reason to find out.

AI, on its own, does nothing to change this. Frontier models do not have access to actual patient records. They do not understand the real performance of doctors — even though the top 25% have roughly 4x lower complication rates than the bottom 25%. They do not know what care will actually cost. And they do not change the underlying economics of who pays for what.

There is a deeper problem coming, too. Public AI tools will be free, ubiquitous, and monetized through ads. We do not want to live in a world where AI sells its recommendations to the highest-bidding provider. Instead, we need to build a future where AI is fundamentally aligned with consumers — giving them the information and incentives they need to find high quality, cost-effective care.

Garner is building the AI-powered healthcare marketplace of the future, grounded in the things public AI cannot replicate: our unique dataset covering more than 320 million patients and a novel incentive system that rewards patients for choosing high quality, efficient providers.

Our Garner Assistant is now directing thousands of patients to high-quality care every day, and our new Garner Research Agent continuously reviews the latest medical literature to ensure our understanding of provider performance is the most robust in the country. Most importantly, our financial model changes the economics for patients themselves: when a Garner member sees a top-performing doctor, their employer helps cover their out-of-pocket cost.

The data is clear — getting both the information and the incentives right is what actually bends the cost curve; approaches that get either piece wrong barely move the needle.

This is the two-sided marketplace healthcare has always needed. On one side, patients finally have an AI-powered tool that knows which doctors are best, what care costs, what is covered, and even pays for them to make the right choice. On the other, providers get a clear economic signal: lucrative commercial volume flows to those who deliver care consistent with best practice and produce great outcomes at a reasonable cost.

That is why some of the largest provider systems in the country — Mercy, Atlantic Health, Teladoc, Marathon Health — now use Garner data to understand the performance of their providers and drive referrals. It is why hospitals are voluntarily lowering prices to compete for volume from Garner clients.

The results so far speak for themselves. Almost 800 employers and partners — including USA Today, Paylocity, Archer-Daniels-Midland, and the University of Oklahoma — now trust Garner to help more than 2.5 million people. Our annual revenue is approximately $200 million and has more than doubled five years in a row. Employers see an average 12% reduction in total healthcare spend in their first year. Members pay 80% less out-of-pocket on average to see the best doctors. We have saved customers over $1 billion to date, and we expect to do it again this year alone.

AI will fix healthcare. But it needs help. It needs access to real data on provider quality and cost, and it needs to be paired with real incentives that change consumer behavior — things that public AI tools will never have. This is the new front door to healthcare that Garner is building, and, with this new investment, we are going to expand it to tens of millions more people.

I am deeply grateful to our team, to our customers and members, and to Jahanvi Sardana and the whole Index Ventures team for believing in this mission. The work ahead is the work that matters most.