The Tempus AI Pitch: Why It’s the ChatGPT of Healthcare
Turning billions of medical datapoints into diagnostics, drug discovery, and investor upside. $TEM
Most people dislike going to the doctor. For good reason. Doctors are human: biased, inconsistent, and limited in how much information they can process. No doctor can run a weighted probabilistic tree of every symptom in real time. The result is what we all know; healthcare is far from perfect.
Think about how you use ChatGPT. You ask it to explain software, summarize complex topics, or guide you through something new. If you, as a consumer, already rely on AI for knowledge, why shouldn’t doctors have the same help; or even be replaced by it?
That’s where Tempus AI comes in. In this write-up, I’ll cover why I think Tempus could become the “ChatGPT of healthcare” and why, if it succeeds, it has a shot at becoming a trillion-dollar company.
The Vision
Healthcare today is plagued by structural problems. Data is collected, but rarely utilized in a modern way. Care is not personalized; most medicine is standardized for the “average” patient rather than tailored to the individual. Errors, sometimes fatal ones; are common.
Tempus AI’s vision is to change this. By collecting massive amounts of real-world clinical and molecular data, then training AI models on it, Tempus aims to help providers make better decisions. Imagine a system that can answer: given this bloodwork, is treatment X likely to benefit this specific patient? That’s not science fiction; it’s already happening. Today, Tempus products are used in oncology, where its AI helps identify the best treatments for tumors and cancers.
Longer term, the implications are radical. If models can consistently outperform doctors in diagnostic reasoning, then the role of the human physician will shrink. Tests may still be administered by people, but the heavy lifting; the reasoning, the treatment design, even the procedures; could shift to AI and robotics. A healthcare system that is less biased, less error-prone, and truly personalized.
Why Tempus AI?
So why does Tempus stand out as the leader in this emerging field? Competition exists, but a few key reasons put Tempus ahead of the pack:
1. Data dominance
In healthcare AI, the player with the most data builds the most accurate models. Accuracy isn’t just a matter of efficiency; it’s life-or-death. One additional datapoint can make the difference in an edge case: a patient with a rare disease no doctor would suspect. If the AI has been trained on that rare case, and matches the symptoms with 100% certainty, it can identify what human physicians would almost certainly miss. That is the power of data at scale.
2. Funding and vision
Reaching the tipping point in AI requires enormous capital, and that depends on management’s ability to sell the vision. Here Tempus excels. Investors and thought leaders; Cathie Wood being a loud example; cannot stop talking about the company’s potential. Without deep funding, no firm can scale its models to the level required to dominate. Tempus is already proving it can.
3. Access to real-world pipelines
Tempus has secured access to a majority of new oncology data being generated in the U.S. This isn’t just about quantity, but breadth. Some competitors may have higher-quality datasets in narrow areas, but Tempus has scale across domains. That makes it the only player positioned to become the brain of healthcare over the long term.
Tempus Strategy
What makes Tempus especially interesting is how grounded the strategy is. This isn’t a company burning cash on hype; they are already generating revenue today, while quietly building a long-term moat through their sequencing and testing business. Every test run through Tempus feeds the models with more data, strengthening the foundation of their future advantage.
At first glance, the business may not look mind-blowing. Adoption is still early, and not every provider is using Tempus yet. But that’s exactly how breakthrough technologies spread. Think of ChatGPT: it existed long before the mainstream suddenly noticed it, but when the tipping point came, adoption went parabolic. I believe Tempus will have a similar moment, when the scale and uniqueness of their data becomes impossible to ignore; and impossible to compete with.
For now, they’re laying the groundwork: a revenue-generating business today, and a massive data moat tomorrow. Once that foundation is fully built, Tempus can deliver measurable, utilitarian benefits across the healthcare system. The outcome is not just better care, but radically cheaper care; an irresistible combination for payers, patients, and governments alike.
Why Is This Valuable?
Imagine a future where healthcare doesn’t cost nearly as much as it does today. Doctors become more like Apple Store employees; providing human interaction and comfort; while AI does the heavy lifting. That shift alone could eliminate one of the largest cost drivers in healthcare: labor. Machines and staff dominate healthcare expenses, but with AI, they no longer need to.
Now think beyond individual patients. A system that optimizes the care plan for one person can also optimize for thousands at the same time. The same AI that decides what tests and treatments are most effective for a single patient can also allocate hospital resources, streamline equipment use, and even model long-term infrastructure needs.
The potential here is nearly limitless. Healthcare is arguably the single most valuable service people are willing to pay for. Even small improvements in outcomes command a premium. Combine that with massive cost savings, and the company that leads this transformation won’t just be successful; it could be worth trillions.
Back to Reality
No company is perfect. Tempus faces plenty of competition, and the road ahead is uncertain. My personal view is that the next wave of trillion-dollar companies will come from healthcare and biotech, but identifying the winners will be extremely difficult. There will be failures along the way.
That’s why it’s crucial to monitor the key players; those that combine AI with vast datasets and have the ability to sell the vision strongly enough to secure funding. Tempus, in my view, has good odds of being one of them.
But it’s also important to remember what drives the valuation. The current numbers don’t justify a trillion-dollar story. The bet is on what Tempus could become in the next decade, not what it is today. That makes this a high-risk, high-reward investment thesis.
If you enjoyed this piece, subscribe to my Substack to get access to all my latest writeups; and stay tuned for a deeper dive into Tempus AI in the future.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and should be taken with a grain of salt.