LEAD is proud to share that we’ve doubled down on our investment in Lotus Health AI, doubling down in the company’s $35M Series A fundraise alongside Kleiner Perkins and CRV, following our initial investment in its Seed round in 2024. We couldn’t be more excited to see all the progress that Lotus has made in building the AI doctor powered by real doctors.
In 2024, when we first met Lotus’s founder, KJ Dhaliwal, he posed a compelling question: What if siloed health records, wearable data, insurance information, millions of peer-reviewed studies, and clinical guidelines were unified in one app?
As the business continued to mature over the next two years, that insight evolved into a bolder vision: making world-class primary care accessible to every American, 24/7. After years of development, Lotus is making this vision real. Partnering with clinicians from Harvard, UCSF, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and other leading institutions, Lotus delivers personalized primary care powered by real doctors, unifying fragmented health data with insurance information and evidence-based medicine, available to patients for free.
“Industry-changing companies are rarely built by insiders—they know too much to question the system. KJ brings an outsider imagination with his technical experience of scaling and exiting one of South Asia’s most successful consumer apps. He’s assembled an exceptional team to ensure this product reaches the people who need it most.”
Justin Driscoll, Principal at LEAD
Healthcare is Broken. Primary Care Is Worse.
When people discuss the state of U.S. healthcare, many point out that we spend twice as much per capita as other large, wealthy countries yet still deliver worse health outcomes. However, as problematic as our overall health system is, the primary care system is even worse.
Acute Physician Shortage: In 2022, 30% of U.S. adults lacked a consistent source of care, the highest level in a decade, even with historically high rates of insurance coverage. Despite primary care’s vital role in providing first contact, coordination, continuity, and comprehensiveness of care, primary care physicians account for only about one-third of the physician workforce, well below the Council of Graduate Medical Education’s recommended 40%. Factors such as retirements and fewer medical graduates choosing family medicine for more lucrative fields are only widening the gap.
Fragmentation and Care Gaps: At the same time, driven by similar forces, the U.S. healthcare system has become increasingly fragmented and specialized in its care delivery, even as the patient population has shifted toward chronic disease management that requires coordinated, continuous care. Today, 76.4% of U.S. adults live with at least one chronic condition, and 51.4% suffer from multiple conditions. These patients bear the brunt of care fragmentation, as managing chronic diseases requires sustained care coordination over long periods.
How We Broke Primary Care (And Why It Matters)
The problem of U.S. primary care is multifaceted.
Misaligned Payment Incentives: The still-dominant fee-for-service model disincentivizes primary care under the American Medical Association’s Relative Value Scale, and the Relative Value Units assigned to primary care services are much lower than those for subspecialties, contributing to lower salaries for family physicians, general internists, and pediatricians.
Declining Payor Investments: Additionally, insurers’ investments in primary care as a share of total healthcare spending fell from 5.4% in 2012 to 4.7% in 2021, despite primary care accounting for 35% of healthcare visits.
The Net Impact Of It All: These forces have resulted in a sharp rise in the number of Americans who lack a consistent source of healthcare, with medically underserved individuals most affected. Even for those with access to primary care, many physicians are overburdened and under-resourced, resulting in limited patient access, short visits, and many patients dissatisfied with timeliness and quality of care.
A Category Ripe for Disruption
As a health specialist investor, LEAD has had our eyes on the health data space ever since the publication of The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) in early 2022, which created the framework for a nationwide “network-of-networks” to enable secure, standardized health data sharing for healthcare stakeholders. However, finding the right opportunity took some time.
“Before investing in Lotus, we met with hundreds of startups in the space and struggled to find a consumer platform that offered both unified health insights and intervention capabilities within the healthcare system.”
Kaiwen Liu, Associate at LEAD
Since our Seed investment in May 2024, we’ve grown increasingly excited as the team transforms vision into product – though until now, we’ve kept that excitement to ourselves while the company built in stealth.
The landscape has shifted dramatically even in the months since our initial investment in 2024. Major technology companies entering healthcare signal that the market recognizes what we saw early: AI-powered care delivery is not theoretical but inevitable. This influx of attention and capital is expanding the category and accelerating user adoption. More than 5% of all ChatGPT messages globally are about health care, and more than 40 million people globally turn to ChatGPT daily for health information.
For purpose-built healthcare companies with clinical rigor and consumer trust, this rising tide creates opportunity rather than competition.
Closing Thoughts
We invested in Lotus and the team because millions of Americans urgently need better primary care solutions. We believe Lotus has the potential to help fill the gap and deliver high-quality, continuous, whole-person care for people suffering from chronic conditions, while supporting under-resourced primary care physicians.
This can truly transform health outcomes for millions, if not billions of people. We couldn’t be more excited to support Lotus in its next chapter.
