New senior executive hires solidify Hippocratic AI as the category leader in safe generative AI for life sciences

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Hippocratic AI, the global leader and pioneer of safe generative AI healthcare agents, today announced new senior executive appointments expanding its life sciences leadership team as the company scales its pharma and medtech business. The appointments — across engineering, medical affairs, commercial growth, and compliance — follow Hippocratic AI’s January 2026 acquisition of Grove AI and the launch of Polaris Life Sciences 5.0, and signal the company’s emergence as the industry’s category-defining voice and conversational AI platform for pharma, biotech, and medtech.

Learn more: https://hippocraticai.com/lifesciences/

“Hippocratic AI is now the established voice and conversational AI platform for life sciences, and we are attracting the most senior leaders in the field,” said Ahad Wahid, President, Life Sciences. “Sri, Toby, John, Himanshu, and Sulaiman together bring more than a century of operating experience across pharma, biotech, and medtech — exactly the bench required to deliver safe, compliant generative AI agents at the scale and standard our life sciences partners demand.”

New Life Sciences Appointments:

Toby Patterson, MD, Senior Vice President, Medical Affairs — Toby joins as Senior Vice President, Medical Affairs, bringing over two decades of senior medical leadership across global pharma. He most recently served as Senior Vice President and Head of U.S. Medical Affairs at Genentech, and previously as Senior Vice President of Global Medical Affairs and Senior Vice President of U.S. Medical Affairs at GSK. Earlier, he held a series of senior medical leadership roles at AbbVie, including Vice President of Medical Operations and Vice President of Immunology and Oncology. Toby holds an MBBS from the University of Adelaide. He leads Hippocratic AI’s medical affairs, quality & pharmacovigilance strategy for life sciences, ensuring the company’s agents meet the clinical, scientific, and ethical bar pharma and medtech partners require.Sulaiman Qazi, Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer, Life Sciences — Sulaiman joins as Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer for Hippocratic AI’s Life Sciences business, bringing more than two decades of global compliance and legal leadership across pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies. Most recently he served as SVP & Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer at Bicycle Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer at Seagen, and earlier held senior compliance and legal leadership roles at AbbVie — including Vice President, Business and Enterprise Compliance and Ethics and Compliance Officer, International — as well as Legal Division Counsel at AbbVie. He is known for building right-sized global compliance teams and infrastructure for highly regulated, fast-scaling life sciences organizations. As Chief Compliance Officer, Sulaiman leads the compliance and regulatory framework underpinning Hippocratic AI’s healthcare agents built natively into the Polaris model family.John Kutz, Chief Growth Officer, Biotech — John joins as Chief Growth Officer for the Biotech business, bringing four decades of commercial and consulting leadership across the life sciences industry. He most recently served as General Manager and Senior Partner at EVERSANA, the global commercialization and consulting platform for pharma and biotech, where he led commercial strategy, brand launches, and growth advisory for some of the industry’s most innovative therapies. Earlier in his career, John held senior roles at Arcus Biosciences, Deloitte, and Prophet. He holds an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and is widely recognized as one of the most respected commercial strategists in biotech. John leads commercial growth for Hippocratic AI’s biotech and emerging-pharma business.Himanshu Sharma, Vice President, Business Development, Life Sciences – Himanshu joins Hippocratic AI as VP of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, leading life sciences commercial growth and ecosystem partnerships for the company’s generative AI healthcare agents. He brings 15+ years at the intersection of healthcare, life sciences, and technology — most recently in Lower Middle Market Private Equity at J.P. Morgan, with prior experience at McKinsey & Company and across healthcare startups. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School and an MS in Bioinformatics from NYU.Sri Subramaniam, Vice President, Engineering, Life Sciences — Sri joins as Vice President, Engineering for Life Sciences, bringing more than two decades of engineering leadership at the intersection of AI and large-scale consumer and enterprise systems. He most recently served as Director of Software Development at Amazon, where he led Voice Agent teams for Alexa AI (automatic speech recognition run-time, Alexa device AI, Amazon Nova speech-to-speech model). Previously he was VP of AI at Credit Karma, VP of e-commerce engg at Walmart, and a founding leader of Walmart Labs. Sri leads the engineering team building Hippocratic AI’s pharma-, biotech-, and medtech-specific agents on top of the Polaris model family.

With these appointments — and following the Grove AI acquisition and the launch of Polaris Life Sciences 5.0 — Hippocratic AI continues to set the bar for safe, compliant generative AI agents purpose-built for pharma, biotech, and medtech.

About Hippocratic AI

Hippocratic AI has developed the safest generative AI agents for healthcare. The company believes that generative AI has the ability to bring healthcare abundance to every person in the world. The company focuses on building non-diagnostic, patient-facing clinical AI agents and does not allow its agents to be used to prescribe or diagnose. Hippocratic AI has received a total of $404 million in funding and is backed by leading investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, Avenir, NVIDIA’s NVentures, Premji Invest, SV Angel, Google’s CapitalG, and numerous health systems. Learn more at https://hippocraticai.com/.

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SOURCE Hippocratic AI

TORONTO, May 20, 2026 /CNW/ – Canada continues to build on its global leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) by fostering international partnerships that support innovation, attract investment and create new opportunities for businesses, researchers and workers.

Today, the Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, joined His Majesty King Felipe VI of Spain and Carlos Cuerpo, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Trade and Business, at MaRS Discovery District in Toronto to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) aimed at advancing Canada–Spain cooperation in artificial intelligence.

The MOU establishes a framework for Canada and Spain to advance cooperation in AI, including opportunities to enable access to compute capacity, foster AI and technology adoption, and deepen connections across government, industry and other stakeholders. It also supports the safe and responsible development and use of AI technologies that enhance productivity and drive economic growth across key sectors of the economy.

A fireside session with Minister Solomon, His Majesty the King of Spain and Deputy Prime Minister Cuerpo focused on how innovation ecosystems and AI are helping drive economic growth, increase competitiveness and accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies across businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises. The session also explored the role of public policy and the private sector in advancing innovation and bringing new technologies to market. Discussions further underscored the importance of international partnerships in promoting trustworthy AI and strengthening global networks. The visit also included a formal exchange of gifts, reflecting the strong and enduring relationship between Canada and Spain.

This cooperation reinforces Canada’s leadership in AI while supporting innovation, investment and long-term economic growth for Canadians.

Quotes

“Today’s engagement with Spain reflects the importance of trusted international partnerships in shaping how artificial intelligence develops in a safe and responsible way. By working together, we can better align innovation with shared values, strengthen research ties and ensure AI delivers long-term economic opportunity and tangible benefits for both countries.”

– The Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario

“This agreement opens a new chapter in the relationship between Spain and Canada. Artificial intelligence is one of the forces that will shape competitiveness and economic sovereignty in the decades ahead, and two democracies such as ours have a responsibility to lead together, building a model of technological cooperation grounded in trust, security and shared benefit.”

– Carlos Cuerpo, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Trade and Business

Quick facts

The MOU reflects growing international cooperation on AI between Canada and Spain.Areas of collaboration may include enabling access to compute capacity, fostering AI and technology adoption, and deepening connections across government, industry and other stakeholders.The framework supports the safe and responsible development and deployment of AI technologies.Collaboration is intended to support innovation, productivity and long-term economic growth across key sectors in both Canada and Spain.

Associated links

Engagements on Canada’s next AI strategyCanadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy

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A Coalition of Maryland Incubators join forces to expand collaboration, founder support, and statewide economic opportunity as: Network for Entrepreneurship, Xceleration & Unified Startups (NEXUS).

FREDERICK, Md., May 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The coalition of four Maryland incubators are collaborating on a unified approach to grow the state’s innovation economy—bringing together regional strengths, shared resources, and coordinated opportunities to better support founders and startups across Maryland.

The Network for Entrepreneurship, Xcelerator & Unified Startups (NEXUS) brings together Bethesda Green (Montgomery County), bwtech@UMBC (Baltimore County), Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Inc. (Frederick County), and The Maryland Innovation Center (Howard County) – marking a shift toward a more connected, statewide ecosystem designed to increase access to capital, resources, and opportunity.

This comes from a shared vision and belief in aligned efforts creating a stronger, more visible innovation ecosystem—one that advances startups, contributes to the broader economy, and strengthens the long-term wellbeing of the entrepreneurs and communities behind them.

“Maryland has incredible innovation assets, and we see an opportunity to connect strategic regions based on synergies that begin to build a connected statewide ecosystem,” said Kathie Callahan Brady, CEO of Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Inc. (FITCI). “This coalition creates stronger pathways for founders, startups, researchers, and investors to access resources, relationships, and opportunities across Maryland. By working together, we can build a more collaborative and competitive environment that helps companies scale faster and strengthens the state’s long-term innovation economy.”

“Each organization brings unique expertise, regional relationships, and industry strengths to the table,” said Dave Feldman, CEO of Bethesda Green. “By connecting those assets instead of duplicating efforts, we can create a more powerful support system for Maryland entrepreneurs across industries including cybersecurity, biotechnology, sustainability, advanced technology, and health innovation.”

Through this partnership, the incubators will:

Pursue grant funding and statewide initiatives that drive innovation, workforce development, and economic growthShare resources across regions, including coworking space, programming, speaker networks, and event insightsExpand access to capital, creating more coordinated fundraising and investor engagement opportunitiesStrengthen support for startups, connecting founders to a broader network of expertise, infrastructure, and communityAlign regional assets into a more cohesive, high-functioning statewide system

“The future of Maryland’s innovation ecosystem is collaborative, connected, and founder-centered,” said Marjorie Cota, Director of Entrepreneurial Services at bwtech@UMBC. “We envision an environment where entrepreneurs can move seamlessly across regions, tap into shared expertise and infrastructure, and access the support they need to grow without being limited by geographic boundaries.”

This is how ecosystems scale, not by building in isolation, but by connecting the right people, resources, and opportunities in a way that compounds over time.

The coalition is structured to evolve, with the potential to bring in additional partners who share the vision of a more unified and impactful innovation ecosystem. With the first collaborative programs and initiatives already underway, the coalition will continue exploring new areas for growth and partnership, including water technologies, food and agriculture, climate innovation, and other emerging sectors important to Maryland’s future economy.

“We see this partnership as the first step towards expanded access and accelerated growth for Maryland’s innovation ecosystem,” said Pauline Shiu, Managing Director of the Maryland Innovation Center. “Together, we’ll elevate Maryland’s position as a destination for advancing technology— attracting capital, accelerating companies, and positioning Maryland to not just compete, but lead,” Shiu added.

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SOURCE Nexus