OpenAI Acquires HealthTech Startup Torch, Plans to Integrate It With ChatGPT Health

OpenAI announced the acquisition of Torch, a healthtech startup, on Monday. The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) giant also stated that the technology will be used to improve ChatGPT Health, its healthcare-focused solution for end users. The acquisition is interesting since one of the Co-Founders of the startup has claimed that the deal cost the ChatGPT-maker north of $100 million (roughly Rs. 902.2 crore). Notably, OpenAI has been aggressively pushing into the healthcare sector since the start of the year 2026.

OpenAI Acquires Torch

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the official handle of OpenAI announced the acquisition of Torch, adding, “Bringing this together with ChatGPT Health opens up a new way to understand and manage your health.” In addition to purchasing the startup, the AI giant is also onboarding the entire staff of Torch, which comprises four people.

Interestingly, Torch is a nascent startup that was founded in 2025 and has not launched any product in the market. Describing what the team was building, Co-Founder Ilya Abyzov said in a post, “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.”

Based on this description, OpenAI will likely use the data (or memory) streamlining technology and integrate it in ChatGPT Health, so that when users upload multiple large documents, the chatbot can still respond to them without losing the context or making an error. But the question that remains is why the AI giant decided to pay more than $100 million (roughly Rs. 902.2 crore) for a technology that it could have developed in-house. Notably, the financials of the deal was revealed by Co-Founder Adrian Aoun in a LinkedIn post.

“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,” added Abyzov.

Notably, OpenAI has also introduced an enterprise suite for healthcare institutions, ChatGPT for Healthcare. It comes with a dedicated GPT-5-powered AI platform and an OpenAI application programming interface (API) that will enable not only hospitals and doctors, but also developers working in the healthcare space to access AI for a wide range of tasks. It is not clear if Torch's tech stack will also be used for this offering.