Commure raises $200M from GC's marketing fund

Axios

6 hours ago

Health care AI infrastructure startup Commure raised $200 million in growth financing from General Catalyst's "customer value fund," a vehicle GC created to power companies' sales and marketing budgets.
Why it matters: The structure means Commure must tie financing to customer performance rather than equity — a notable move for GC, which poured millions into now-shuttered AI health infrastructure play Olive.
What's next: CEO Tanay Tandon expects to see Commure go public in the next two years.
Commure is considering a tender offer sometime later this year, per Tandon, who sees it as a good opportunity to consolidate its core investors.
The company may also raise another round of capital later this year, Tandon tells Axios Pro.
Zoom in: With this funding, Commure is effectively raising against the cashflows of its existing customers. If the marketing campaigns underperform, GC absorbs the loss.
Today, Commure has $200 million in live, contracted annual revenue, per Tandon.
The company has about six years of runway, and is on track to be cashflow positive by the middle to end of next year, he adds.
What he's saying:"Ambient and RCM lines are about 70-75% of our sales and marketing focus," says Tandon.
The raise "effectively lets us accelerate our investments in eng[ineering], because it's taken S&M off our balance sheet," he adds.
How it works: GC wants Commure to set the blueprint for AI-native infrastructure in U.S. health systems.
Reality check: That's an effort the investment firm underwrote previously in Olive AI, the $4 billion hospital-facing automation startup whose technology didn't live up to the promise.
While Commure has multiple health tech assets via previous M&A activity — including those of patient navigation startup Memora Health and ambient AI company Augmedix — it's unclear which ones, if any, are consistently profitable.
Tandon says Commure's fastest-growing business lines are in revenue cycle, workflow management, and ambient AI.
What they're saying: "I see revenue cycle as [Commure's] core revenue engine that allows us to fund other modules that live on top, like ambient [AI] and clinical copilots," Tandon says.
Friction point: Commure faces considerable hurdles in the form of dominant electronic medical records giants (EMRs), several of whom are expected to release their own competitive AI tools.