Managing Director @Audacious_Cap. Board member @SJMCTowson, @ShiftMedNurses & @icanbwell. Fellow @AspenInstitute. Dad to three great boys.
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Joined February 2010
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From Bethlehem Steel to Anduril, Sparrows Point tells a remarkable story of reinvention.
Anduril’s planned $3.7B investment could create 3,100+ jobs—a powerful reminder that innovation can create opportunity, not just disruption.
Latest snapshot is up:
linkedin.com/pulse/better-st…
Chris Brandt retweeted
There are two very frustrating things going on with defenders today. First, encountering critical infrastructure that obviously hasn’t been hardened by AI at all. Second, defenders thinking “48 hours to a vuln response” is a timeline they can afford.
When AI doom makes it to Saturday Night Live, it’s worth asking what those narratives mean for the companies selling tokens—and those building with them—as the midterm elections approach and frontier labs contemplate IPOs.
UpSurge Business Investor Snapshot is live: linkedin.com/pulse/ai-doom-m…
Proud to see two Audacious Capital portfolio companies — b.well Connected Health and ShiftMed — named to TIME’s 2026 list of the World’s Top HealthTech Companies.
Serving on both boards has given me a close view of the work these teams are doing under Kristen Valdes and Todd Walrath. b.well connects fragmented health information for patients and the organizations caring for them. ShiftMed helps health systems use their workforce more effectively while giving clinicians greater flexibility.
Congrats to the teams at b.well and ShiftMed.
time.com/article/2026/09/16/…
@audacious_cap @icanbwell @ShiftMedNurses
A little concerned that application of AI is being villainized. Upcoding has been an issue for a long time. If negative sentiment on AI becomes too pervasive, we will slow the applications that lead to improvements in quality, patient experience and access…
The Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association says that AI is already driving *up* healthcare costs, as hospitals use the technology to find instances where they can bill more for the same level of care. bcbs.com/about-us/associatio…
Maryland has a number of health systems that are small. This makes it very try difficult to support necessary fixed costs…
Hutzell: Here’s what Luminis Health won’t say about its cyberattack buff.ly/0iDKM6E by columnist @HutzellRick
👀 nothing to see here.
ANTHROPIC BUILDS BIOLOGY LAB TO PUSH AI INTO DRUG DEVELOPMENT
Anthropic has quietly established a Bay Area wet lab, moving its life-sciences ambitions beyond computer simulations and into physical biological experiments.
The company wants Claude to direct laboratory robots with limited human intervention, potentially accelerating research into rare and traditionally “undruggable” diseases.
Anthropic says it will focus on preclinical research rather than clinical trials, avoiding direct competition with pharmaceutical companies.
Chris Brandt retweeted
We benchmarked DeepSeek V4.1 Flash by @deepseek_ai .
It reached 98% of GPT-6 Astra’s score at 1.4% of the cost on everyday design tasks based on user requests.
Every model except Astra scored lower AND cost more.
Are open models overtaking closed ones?
Full results below ↘️
Chris Brandt retweeted
Despite two years of work on this issue, Maryland remains dead last with the absolute highest emergency room wait times.
Blue states dominate the list of states with the longest average waits at the hospital emergency room.
Why might that be?
Source: findemr.com/
August snapshot is up.
Venture capital’s underperformance relative to public markets could have implications for future asset allocation. Demographic shifts are signaling where demand is headed.
Nothing breeds opportunity like a crisis! linkedin.com/pulse/where-ret…
‘In fact, one likely outcome is that non-AI care will be *far more expensive*.’
This is inevitable and already manifesting, as users are canceling appointments after consultation with general LLMs.
You seem sincere so I'll engage with you. I think you wildly underestimate the complexity of primary care.
For example, someone working at a FQHC would be doing very different things vs. someone who's working for MDVIP. And they entail actually different "big picture" clinical reasoning.
There are constraints that are implicit in interpersonal interactions that are obvious if you *know* the patient *as a human*, which is difficult at the present time for AI's automate. These constraints (end of life care, goals of care discussions, etc) also only occur infrequently enough that you can't easily modulate without intuition.
Very similar to "proof checking", clinical answers need to be *checked* before they can be trusted. There's a lot of room for automation, but the form with which this occurs is nontrivial. And certainly won't be free.
In fact, one likely outcome is that non-AI care will be *far more expensive*.
Chris Brandt retweeted
You don’t understand business Ro.
It doesn’t have to fail. Those entrepreneurs can bust their asses for the next 10 yrs. Create THOUSANDS OF JOBS, pay more than 250m taxes to the Feds and state over those 10 yrs.
BUT, never have 250m they can take out of the company. BECAUSE THEY ARE GROWING. Making them unable to pay back California their loan.
Is that what you want your state to be ?
Next tweet we can discuss who the money is going to with Prop 40.
The government would still collect from the vast majority of billionaires who are not illiquid. 72 percent of their wealth is in public stock. We are talking here about true paper billionaires with illiquid assets. And in those cases, the government would make out if the company succeeds in terms of collection but founders would not be personally liable if the company somehow failed.
Mark, come on a road trip with me around California, Pennsylvania and the country and ask ordinary Americans how they feel about a billionaire tax. Most say, I promise you, why only 5 percent?
There used to be a time where everyone deeply admired business leaders. We always had our suspicion with politicians. But business leaders were different. Andy Grove, Lee Iacocca, Warren Buffett. I know people respect you, especially with shark tank! But doesn't it concern you that today's business leaders do not have the same esteem today. Why is that? It's because many Americans feel the system is not working for them, that the success of a few is not tied to their success.
What I am trying to do is offer a new social contract for this country. I am a progressive capitalist --I want a future economy that works for everyone, not just the capital class in a few places. I want thoughtful business leaders like you to help me build that country.
Thats what FDR did with recruiting Bill Knudson from GM, railing against economic royalists, and then getting business leaders to industrialize America and build the greatest middle class!
This sentiment is overselling the AI trend. We have such an enormous shortage of clinical workers - people want and need care from people. The job will (and should) evolve but clinical staff will have as much work as they want for the foreseeable future. Ref: healthaffairs.org/content/fo…
It does make me sad that most doctors don’t see that AI will replace 80-90% their jobs in 10 years.
A good exercise is to think of the dumbest doctor you know and the type of care their patients are receiving. If AI helps those patients get better outcomes, isn’t that better for society?
Now, imagine that the number of doctors in that pool gets smaller and smaller over time.
We will end up with a lot less doctors… but they will be the best doctors in the world who will undoubtedly be better for patients than any AI (at the time) could be. But, patients would have unlimited access to health and care.
Patients are already opting out of the system… slowly then all at once.
Doctors just don’t see it yet.
As AI models commoditize, the moat shifts to proprietary data, institutional expertise, networks, relationships and control. My article for UpSurge Baltimore: linkedin.com/pulse/who-owns-…
Excited about the upcoming health innovation summit in Baltimore - inflection point. Unique combination of healthcare leaders, policymakers and innovators. Ref: bit.ly/inflectionpoint26