Shiv Rao, cardiologist-turned-CEO of Abridge, explains why the company focuses on doctor-patient conversations rather than just notes, how it builds 70–80% of its own AI models, and why it retains full control despite raising $800 million. He also outlines Abridge’s edge over dozens of rival scribes, its new real-time prior-auth tool, and how it navigates liability and regulation.

• Abridge builds 70-80% of its own AI models in-house rather than relying on public/frontier models, reserving those for non-critical tasks
• Despite raising $800 million, Shiv Rao and co-founders retain full control and avoid strategic investors with board seats to prevent conflicts of interest
• The company differentiates itself from ~126 competing AI scribes by focusing on the full clinical conversation (not just notes) as the foundation for downstream workflows like billing and orders
• Abridge operates in 250+ health systems at a $5.3 billion valuation, targeting over a million recorded patient encounters per day this year