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As OpenAI and Anthropic formalize their healthcare and life sciences divisions, they are doing more than just selling software; they are auditioning to become the foundational “operating system” for a multitrillion-dollar industry. While their goals are identical — capturing clinical workflows and research cycles — their strategies reveal a fundamental divergence over how a risk-averse sector will ultimately adopt generative AI.

OpenAI: Healthcare at Scale

OpenAI is approaching healthcare as an extension of its broader platform strategy. Its recently announced OpenAI for Healthcare initiative is framed as an enterprise AI stack designed to slot into existing health system workflows, helping organizations automate documentation, reduce administrative burden, and standardize care delivery while meeting HIPAA requirements.

Rather than offering a single healthcare product, OpenAI is emphasizing APIs, business associate agreements, and integrations that allow hospitals, insurers and software vendors to embed its models into clinical decision support tools, chart summarization, care coordination and analytics. The company has highlighted physician-led benchmarking efforts such as HealthBench to demonstrate that its models can meet clinical expectations for reliability and alignment.

At the same time, OpenAI is leveraging a consumer channel that few competitors can match. ChatGPT is already used at massive scale for health-related questions, from interpreting lab results to understanding symptoms and insurance options. That usage is now being formalized through ChatGPT Health, which allows users to securely connect personal health data so responses can be grounded in individual context.

On Monday (Jan. 12) OpenAI announced in a post on X that it acquired healthcare startup Torch, which unifies lab results, medications and visit recordings, and will combine it with ChatGPT Health. In its own blog post about the acquisition, Torch that by bringing together health information that is otherwise scattered, it builds “a medical memory for AI” that helps patients see the whole picture. OpenAI said in its post: “Bringing this together with ChatGPT Health opens up a new way to understand and manage your health.”

OpenAI is careful to position the consumer experience delivered by ChatGPT Health as informational rather than diagnostic, and it is not regulated under HIPAA. Still, the company has acknowledged that healthcare is already one of ChatGPT’s largest use cases, with tens of millions of health-related queries flowing through the system daily, as reported by PYMNTS. That demand effectively serves as a top-of-funnel for enterprise adoption, familiarizing patients and clinicians alike with AI as a default interface for medical information.

Anthropic: Bet on Specialization

Anthropic is taking a more targeted approach. Instead of extending a mass-market assistant into healthcare, it is building healthcare and life sciences offerings on top of the Claude model family, with an emphasis on tightly controlled, domain-specific deployments.

The company’s Claude for Healthcare product is designed for clinicians, insurers and healthcare administrators, with HIPAA-ready infrastructure and direct integrations into authoritative datasets such as ICD-10 coding systems, CMS coverage data, the National Provider Identifier Registry, and PubMed. These connectors enable concrete workflows like prior authorization, report generation, and medical coding interpretation, rather than broad conversational use.

Anthropic is also pushing deeper into life sciences. Through Claude for Life Sciences, the company is positioning its models as research partners embedded in scientific environments, connected to platforms like PubMed, Benchling and ClinicalTrials.gov. The focus is on tasks such as literature synthesis, hypothesis generation, clinical trial planning, and regulatory documentation, placing Claude closer to the core of biomedical research rather than at the patient-facing edge.

A central theme in Anthropic’s messaging is control. The company emphasizes that data accessed through healthcare and research integrations is not used to train its models, and it highlights customizable agent skills, including FHIR-based tool building, that allow organizations to define how Claude operates within strict boundaries. This reflects a view of healthcare as a market where trust, auditability and predictability matter more than rapid experimentation.

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That adaptability is a central theme of “Financial Scams and Consumer Trust,” a November report produced by PYMNTS Intelligence in collaboration with Block.

Based on a U.S. census-balanced survey of more than 15,000 consumers, the research finds that nearly one in five U.S. adults has experienced at least one scam in the past five years, underscoring how deeply fraud has embedded itself in everyday financial life.

Younger, Digital-First Consumers Are Most at Risk

One of the report’s most striking findings upends long-held assumptions about who is most vulnerable. Younger generations, not older ones, face the highest exposure. About 24% of millennials and 22% of Generation Z consumers report having been scammed in the past five years, compared with 14% of baby boomers and seniors.

College-educated consumers are also more likely to be victims than those without a degree, reflecting greater digital engagement and exposure.

The channels matter. Email and phone calls remain the most common entry points overall, but social media plays an outsized role for Gen Z, accounting for nearly one-quarter of first scam contacts among that cohort. Across age groups, fraudsters overwhelmingly rely on impersonation, posing as trusted companies, banks, government agencies or even personal contacts.

Technology as an Enabler for Scammers

Technology has lowered both the cost and the speed of fraud. Scammers increasingly use digital marketplaces, peer-to-peer payment rails and AI-enabled impersonation tools to make schemes more convincing. Speed is a core weapon: nearly two-thirds of victims make a payment within 24 hours of first contact, and many do so within minutes. In more than half of cases, victims send money directly; in the rest, they unknowingly provide account credentials that allow funds to be drained.

The Top Five Scams Targeting Consumers

• Fake debt collection (18%): Fraudsters pose as collectors demanding immediate payment. Victims span income and age groups, with strong impact across generations.
• Scams leading to identity theft (16%): Stolen personal data is used to access or open accounts. These scams are especially damaging and frequently reported to banks.
• Gift card scams (15%): Victims are pressured to buy and share gift card codes. Younger consumers and bridge millennials are disproportionately affected.
• Fake eCommerce or marketplace scams (14%): Nonexistent goods are sold online, with older consumers more likely to report these as their most costly incidents.
• Investment scams (8%): Though less common, they cause the largest losses, with median household losses exceeding $3,000 and heavy use of cryptocurrency payments.

How Technology Can Also Be the Defense

The report makes clear that prevention and response are inseparable. Consumers who report scams to their financial institutions are far more likely to recover funds, and trust rebounds sharply when recovery occurs.

For banks and FinTechs, the defenses increasingly hinge on technology: real-time transaction monitoring, confirmation prompts that slow high-risk payments, stronger identity verification and clearer reporting pathways inside apps and online banking portals. Just as important is education that helps consumers recognize impersonation tactics and urgency cues before money moves.

Fraud may be relentless, but the data shows it is not unbeatable. Faster detection, clearer communication and earlier intervention can reduce losses, preserve trust and keep consumers engaged in the digital economy.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.

The suspension of the “technology prosperity deal” comes amid rising frustration in Washington over the progress of trade discussions with the U.K., the Financial Times reported Monday (Dec. 15).

The deal, announced in September during President Donald Trump’s trip to the U.K., is designed to promote collaboration between the countries on artificial intelligence, nuclear energy and quantum computing, according to the report.

The U.S. suspended the deal last week, the report said, citing unnamed U.K. officials. The White House is lobbying for concessions from the U.K. on trade areas beyond the scope of the agreement, formed in response to tariffs on U.K. goods.

The U.S. became frustrated with the lack of willingness from the U.K. to deal with “non-tariff barriers,” such as rules and regulations on food and industrial goods, the report said, citing unnamed sources.

Although the U.K. agreed to allow 13,000 tons of U.S. beef to enter the country free of tariffs each year, the trade deal said the two sides would continue to work together to improve market access for more U.S. agricultural products, according to the report.

The U.S. has for years pushed the U.K. to recognize American food and agricultural product standards, although there were no specific commitments included in the deal, per the report.

Meanwhile, Trump has criticized the digital services tax imposed on tech companies by U.S. trading partners. However, one U.K. official denied that this tax, which affects American tech companies, was a serious issue, according to the report.

“The digital services tax is a red herring,” the official said, per the report. “We are down to negotiating some of the most difficult issues. Both sides expect this to take some time. But the dialogue remains open, active and constructive.”

The trade deal was accompanied by a $1.6 billion investment from financial companies, including PayPal, Bank of America and Citigroup, with commitments to create 1,800 jobs in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

“Strengthening ties with the U.S. boosts our economy, creates jobs and secures our role in global finance, delivering on our Plan for Change,” U.K. Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle said in September. “These investments reflect the strength of our enduring ‘golden corridor’ with one of our closest trading partners, ahead of the U.S. presidential state visit.”

The company says the deal, announced Tuesday (Dec. 16), will make Monzo the first U.K. bank to offer a “fully end-to-end mortgage broking experience” within its app. The deal is expected to close in the spring of 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Monzo has transformed money management for millions and millions of customers, yet we know that mortgages still remain a complex, cumbersome pain point, and one we are looking to solve,” Kunal Malani, Monzo’s chief banking officer, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.

“This is a huge step in our mission to make money work for everyone, and we’re excited to bring Monzo’s simplicity and transparency to one of life’s biggest financial moments.”

The release notes that Monzo already lets users track their mortgages with its Homeownership feature. With research indicating that a majority of U.K. mortgage seekers used a broker last year, the company says this acquisition brings it closer to becoming the sole app customers use to manage their financial lives.

Monzo’s acquisition of Habito comes at a momentous time for Monzo, which this year surpassed 14 million customers, including 800,000 businesses. The company’s revenue jumped 48% to £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) for fiscal year 2025, with adjusted profit before tax up to £113.9 million ($151 million) from £13.9 million ($18.6 million).

The company also recently named a new CEO. Diana Layfield, former general manager of search international and growth at Google, is set to become Monzo’s chief executive in February, replacing TS Anil, who will move into an advisory role.

Meanwhile, October saw reports that Monzo was considering a new application for a U.S. banking license as it tries to speed up its expansion in America.

Sources told the Financial Times that the company believes that a new application would be more likely to win approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the wake of the deregulatory push under the administration of President Donald Trump.

Writing about Monzo’s U.S. interests at the time, PYMNTS noted that the company had also “raised capital in past rounds with explicit reference to U.S. expansion and, in preparation for scaling operations, hired a U.S.-based CEO with deep FinTech experience.”