Zachary Lipton is the Co-founder and CTO of Abridge, an AI healthcare company that recently raised $300M at a $5.3B valuation to transform clinical documentation with ambient AI.

We discuss his journey from jazz musician to ML researcher to startup co-founder, and how personal experience led him to reinvent the doctor–patient encounter.

We also discuss:

- Deploying AI in live hospital settings,
- How ambient AI is reshaping clinical documentation at scale,
- What it takes to deeply integrate with systems like Epic,
- The LLM moment and how ChatGPT changed the game for healthcare,
- Navigating safety, privacy, and compliance in high-stakes environments,
- And much more!

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Brought to you by Autoblocks (https://www.autoblocks.ai/) — helping teams build safe, reliable, and compliant LLM-based products.

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Building with AI is a weekly podcast featuring conversations with top AI product builders and leaders. Through thoughtful dialogue, host Haroon Choudery explores how AI is reshaping industries in real-time. This season, we're diving deep into one of the most impactful and high-stakes applications of AI: healthcare.

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Subscribe to Building With AI:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/
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Where to find Zachary Lipton:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharylipton/
X: https://x.com/zacharylipton

Learn more about Abridge:

Website: https://www.abridge.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/abridgehq/
X: https://x.com/AbridgeHQ

Where to find Haroon Choudery:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haroonchoudery/
X: https://x.com/haroonchoudery

Learn more about Autoblocks:

Website: https://www.autoblocks.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/autoblocks/posts/
X: https://x.com/AutoblocksAI

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[00:00] – Up Next
[00:45] – Episode Introduction
[02:25] – Autoblocks: AI Optimization Platform
[03:50] – A Personal Health Crisis Sparks a Startup
[13:08] – The LLM Moment
[22:00] – Reimagining Doctor-Patient Encounters with AI
[27:50] – Embedding AI in Complex Clinical Workflows: The Abridge Playbook
[32:05] – “This Saved My Marriage”: What Clinicians Really Think
[36:16] – Making AI Smarter with Context
[44:40] – Can AI Fix Healthcare’s Broken Billing System?
[51:05] – Scaling AI in Regulated, High-Stakes Environments
[52:30] – Why This Work Matters: Leadership, Mission, and Impact