Digital health · AI primary care
Clara
An AI powered primary care practice built by the founders who scaled Circle Medical to nine figures in revenue. Clara reads a patient's full medical history and drafts refills, lab orders and care plans, and a licensed clinician signs off before anything reaches the patient.
Two things on one page
Clara's own launch materials hold a tension the company does not try to hide. The site calls itself an “AI-powered primary care doctor.” A few lines later, in the fine print, it says the chatbot is “not providing medical services” and that no advice from Clara creates a doctor patient relationship. The clinical decisions, the prescriptions, the lab orders, all of it comes from a licensed provider working for one of five affiliated medical groups named in the Terms of Service: Clara Health Medical Services PA, West PC, East PC, Northwest PC and Midwest PA. Clara, the technology company, says it only facilitates.
That split is not an accident. It is the legal architecture that lets an AI chatbot sit in front of a real medical practice without the company itself practicing medicine.
The gap it is aimed at
Primary care in the United States runs on the fifteen minute visit, a format built for an era before continuous health data. A patient's records now live scattered across hospitals, labs, pharmacies and wearables, and no single fifteen minute conversation can absorb all of it. Clara's premise is that most of what a primary care visit does, gathering history, drafting a refill, flagging an abnormal lab, checking a chronic condition against guidelines, can be prepared by software and reviewed by a clinician in far less time than it takes to conduct the visit from scratch.
The company says its system pulls records from “150,000+ hospitals, labs, and pharmacies” and reads the full history at every interaction. Dealroom, reporting independently, noted that the 150,000 figure “hasn't been independently verified.”
Founders who already built this once
George Favvas spent a decade as CEO of Circle Medical, a virtual primary care practice he co-founded that went through Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch. By his own account on Clara's team page, he grew Circle Medical to over $100 million in annual revenue while it stayed profitable on only $12 million in primary capital. Dealroom, describing the same track record independently, put Circle Medical's revenue at $64.7 million a year, a smaller figure than the company's own claim.
Two other Circle Medical veterans followed him. Caitlin Swift was VP of Clinical Operations at Circle Medical as it scaled to nearly one million telehealth encounters a year across 425 providers; she is a board certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a Clara co-founder. Zeeshan Ahmed led product design for Circle Medical's clinical tools before a stint at Meta on Instagram's ad products, and now leads product design at Clara.
The founding team recruited two more names with regulatory weight. Brendan Levy, a board certified family medicine physician, founded HeyDoctor (YC S17), whose platform powered GoodRx Care and Wheel; he stayed on as GoodRx's Chief Medical Officer through its IPO after GoodRx acquired HeyDoctor, and now holds the same title at Clara. Claudia Tucker joins from Teladoc Health, where as SVP of Government Affairs she led a 60 person team and, during the pandemic, worked with governors in nearly every state to waive physician licensure barriers. At Clara she leads government affairs.
Launch, on the back of a fast raise
Clara launched publicly on May 14, 2026, with a blog post from Favvas announcing a $12 million pre-seed round and the company's admission to Y Combinator. The round was led by Y Combinator and A.Capital, with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, SV Angel and a list of individual angels that includes Joe Montana's fund, Immad Akhund, Kevin Hartz and Vinny Lingham. The company calls the round oversubscribed. Its own launch post describes joining what it calls the “YC P26 batch,” a label the company used in its own words.
The service itself is cash pay only. Three tiers, $25, $50 and $150 a month according to Dealroom's reporting, span unlimited AI chat with prescription review at the base level up to video visits, wearable integration and longevity lab panels at the top. None of the tiers bill insurance, though Clara says the plans qualify for HSA and FSA reimbursement. The company says it treats standard conditions, allergies, hypothyroidism, type 2 diabetes, urinary tract infections and weight management, and that it will not prescribe controlled substances.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate structure | Clara's Terms of Service name Clara Health, Inc. as the technology entity and five separately organized professional entities, Clara Health Medical Services PA, West PC, East PC, Northwest PC and Midwest PA, as the “Medical Groups” that employ the clinicians and hold responsibility for care. | Company-stated |
| Fully licensed in all 50 states | Stated in Clara's own launch post and YC listing: “Clara is a fully licensed primary care practice in all 50 states and can be your PCP or work alongside them.” No independent state medical board confirmation was found for this profile. | Company-stated |
| 150,000+ connected hospitals, labs and pharmacies | Company figure. Dealroom's independent report flagged that the number “hasn't been independently verified.” | Unverified claim |
| Circle Medical revenue at exit | Clara's own team page says George Favvas grew Circle Medical to “over $100M in annual revenue.” Dealroom's independent report put the figure at “US$64.7M-a-year.” | Differs from independent reporting |
| FDA clearance or registration | None found. Clara does not claim an FDA cleared device; its model rests on a licensed clinician reviewing and signing off on every prescription and lab order, which is the structure companies use to keep AI triage tools outside FDA device regulation. | Not found |
| Registered clinical trials, NIH or NSF awards, peer reviewed papers | None found under Clara or Clara Health in ClinicalTrials.gov, NIH RePORTER, NSF award search or PubMed as of this research. | Not found |
| Independent clinical commentary | A physician writing for iatroX, a clinician facing AI platform, reviewed Clara's public model in May 2026 and flagged specific limits: no physical examination, limited safeguarding detection, risk of “diagnostic anchoring” on old records, and the chance that optional longevity testing generates “anxiety, incidental findings, and follow-up cascades.” | Independent |
Read plainly: Clara's case rests almost entirely on who built it rather than on anything filed, cleared or published yet. The founders' Circle Medical run is real and documented, even if the two public tellings of its revenue do not match. Everything about Clara's own product, the record count, the 50 state coverage, the clinical outcomes, is either company-stated or has not yet been tested by an outside filing.
What to watch
- Whether Clara publishes named clinical results or outcomes data as it scales past launch.
- Any state medical board action or guidance specific to AI-mediated primary care, an area regulators are actively watching according to Axios's December 2025 survey of state AI health care laws.
- A first SEC Form D for Clara Health, Inc., which would confirm the $12 million pre-seed on the public record. None had appeared in EDGAR as of this research.
- Whether Clara raises a follow-on round, and what investors and terms it discloses.
In their words
“Clara is a fully licensed primary care practice in all 50 states and can be your PCP or work alongside them.”
Company launch listing, Y Combinator, 2026 · Company-stated
“Building AI primary care from the ground up.”
George Favvas, cofounder and CEO, Clara launch post, May 14, 2026 · Company release
“We're in the YC P26 batch and have raised $12M in an oversubscribed pre-seed led by Y Combinator and A.Capital.”
George Favvas, Clara launch post, May 14, 2026 · Company release
“It's the architecture the entire business rests on.”
Dealroom.co staff analysis, on Clara's framing that its AI is not a physician, June 17, 2026 · Independent
“The founders' track record at Circle Medical gives them credibility few AI health startups can match. But credibility and clinical safety are different things, and regulators will be watching closely.”
Dealroom.co staff analysis, June 17, 2026 · Independent
“The clinician sign-off is not a footnote or a disclaimer. It is the regulatory and trust architecture of the entire model.”
Dr Kola Tytler, iatroX, May 16, 2026 · Independent
“This is one of the strongest founder-market fit stories in the batch.”
The YC Tier List, 2026 assessment · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- CompanyClara: AI primary care doctor, company and launch listing
- CompanyLaunch YC: Clara, AI-powered primary care doctor
- CompanyClara launches with $12M pre-seed round, joins Y Combinator
- CompanyClara homepage
- CompanyClara team page
- CompanyAI Primary Care landing page
- CompanyTerms of Service, naming Clara Health, Inc. and affiliated Medical Groups
- IndependentCircle Medical founders launch Clara AI primary care with $12M
- IndependentClara and the AI Doctor Model: What Clinicians Should Know About AI-Native Primary Care
- IndependentClara, Y Combinator batch assessment
- IndependentClara, company and founder listing
- IndependentHere's how states are policing AI in health care
- Public recordEDGAR company search, Form D, for entities matching “Clara Health” and “Clara”
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
