Lotus Health, a startup that offers free primary care through an AI doctor, raised a $35m Series A round announced on 3 February 2026. CRV and Kleiner Perkins co-led the round, TechCrunch reported, and the total raised to date is $41m. The gap implies about $6m of earlier funding, which neither source breaks out. No valuation was disclosed.
Saar Gur, a general partner at CRV, led the deal for his firm and joined the board. HIT Consultant added that former American football player Joe Montana and Aneesh Chopra, a former US chief technology officer, also back the company.
“AI is giving the advice, but the real doctors are actually signing off on it.”KJ Dhaliwal, founder, Lotus Health
How the service works
Lotus describes a primary care provider that is available around the clock in more than 50 languages and requires no insurance. It handles diagnosis, prescriptions and specialist referrals, and HIT Consultant said it aggregates medical records, lab results and wearable data.
Most of the work is done by AI that is trained to ask the questions a doctor would. Board-certified doctors from institutions such as Stanford, Harvard and UCSF review final diagnoses, lab orders and prescriptions, TechCrunch reported, in what HIT Consultant called a physician-in-the-loop model. Urgent cases are sent to urgent care or an emergency room, and cases needing a physical exam go to an in-person physician.
The company says it is licensed in all 50 US states, carries malpractice insurance and uses HIPAA-compliant systems, according to TechCrunch. It claims its model lets doctors see ten times as many patients as a traditional practice, with visits limited to 15 minutes. That is a company claim that neither outlet verified.
Founder and business model
Founder KJ Dhaliwal sold the South Asian dating app Dil Mil for $50m in 2019 and launched Lotus Health AI in May 2024, TechCrunch reported. HIT Consultant said he grew up translating medical appointments for his immigrant parents.
Care is free for now. TechCrunch said Dhaliwal told it future models may include sponsored content or subscriptions. HIT Consultant described revenue coming from premium sponsorships inside the app rather than insurance billing, and noted that critics raise concerns about privacy and commercial influence.
Dhaliwal told TechCrunch: "AI is giving the advice, but the real doctors are actually signing off on it." Gur said there are many challenges, but it is not SpaceX sending astronauts to the moon.
What the money is for
HT World reported that the funds will go to building out infrastructure, a clinical team and runway for the AI primary care model, and that Kleiner Perkins also led the seed round. It described the product as consolidating medical records, lab results, medications, wearable data and insurance benefits into one patient profile, with lab ordering and in-person care routing described as coming soon.
Annie Case, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, said that every few decades a product emerges that does not just improve a system but redefines it. The company's claims that the model lowers care costs and makes doctors ten times more productive are its own and are not independently verified.
A crowded idea
TechCrunch noted that Doctronic, backed by Lightspeed, is also building an AI doctor. The sources do not state Lotus Health's headquarters, its headcount or its number of patients, and TechCrunch said the current focus is product development and patient acquisition.
Company website: lotushealth.ai