Roughly five years ago, Ant Group reined in its ambitions after a derailed initial public offering. Today, the Jack Ma-backed company is betting on a very different business to fuel its next phase of growth: health care powered by artificial intelligence. What began as a digital payments platform has become one of China's biggest investors in medical AI, backing software that fields patient questions and connects them with doctors, pharmacies and insurers. In November, Ant elevated its health unit to the same level as operations including Alipay and its lending businesses, underscoring how central the effort has become to the company's strategy. After years focused on consumer lending, wealth management and insurance technology, health care is now where executives believe AI can unlock the next wave of growth, leveraging Ant's massive user base to become its biggest business outside of payments.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the new administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), spent much of his first all-staff meeting on Monday promoting the use of artificial intelligence at the agency and praising Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again Initiative," sources tell WIRED. During the meeting, Oz discussed possibly prioritizing AI avatars over frontline health care workers. Oz claimed that if a patient went to a doctor for a diabetes diagnosis, it would be 100 per hour, while an appointment with an AI avatar would cost considerably less, at just 2 an hour. Oz also claimed that patients have rated the care they've received from an AI avatar as equal to or better than a human doctor. Because of technologies like machine learning and AI, Oz claimed, it is now possible to scale "good ideas" in an affordable and fast way.

Early stage startups are assessed using 100 parameters. Advanced stage companies are assessed using more than 300 settings. Nowadays there is a storm of news about the use of AI technology in the broader field of health care because of its cosmogenic activity to reshape it. Long established organizations, as well as newly founded startups, compete with each other who will catch the train of innovation to reach first the station of significant results. The weakest companies need the right financial boosting that will turn their idea into an innovative product or service.