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A Pittsburgh artificial intelligence startup emerging as a challenger to Microsoft’s clinical note taking business has raised $150 million, a rare mega deal in a funding lull. The startup, Abridge, also has an unlikely cheerleader: Paul Ricci, the former head of Nuance, the service from Microsoft it competes with.

Abridge sells an AI tool that rapidly transcribes and summarizes doctors’ conversations with patients in a hospital’s electronic health records software. The startup’s leaders and investors tell STAT they’re betting that their medical knowledge, agility, and willingness to co-develop features with customers makes it a more attractive long term option than Nuance, which Microsoft says is currently used by most U.S. hospitals.

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Microsoft, Abridge and other startups like Suki, Corti and Nabla are locked in a race to ease provider burnout by automating clinical note taking, and — thanks to generative AI — organizing the data in a way that could improve care, such as suggesting topics for follow-up, simplifying billing or analyzing trends at the broader patient population level.

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