Heidi Cuts 108 Jobs After $475m Fundraising

Heidi will cut 108 jobs, about 18 per cent of its staff, after raising US$340 million in September and as two of its three co-founders leave the business. The company says it’s steering its workforce toward the markets and investments it expects to deliver the greatest impact. Workers whose roles no longer fit that plan will pay the immediate price.

Who Gets Cut

Chief executive Thomas Kelly delivered the news on Thursday morning. Heidi hasn’t said which markets will be affected. Severance packages will vary by country but exceed statutory requirements, and the company is still hiring for key roles. Employees face job losses even as Heidi continues to recruit where it sees a business need.

Heidi’s software records doctor-patient consultations and writes clinical notes. The company operates in more than 190 countries and claims a market-leading position in Britain and the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, its software is used at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, Children's Health Queensland and Metro South Health in Brisbane.

Heidi says it supports close to 3 million patient interactions a week. Its annual recurring revenue reached US$50 million in April, up from US$1 million two years earlier. Those figures sit beside the decision to remove 108 roles. Rapid growth and a large user base haven’t protected workers from the company’s restructuring.

Capital and the Company Line

In September, Heidi raised US$340 million (A$475 million) in a deal led by venture capital firm Blackbird, valuing the company at $1.26 billion. The fundraising included a US$240 million facility from US firm General Catalyst, which Heidi will repay from revenue the money generates. The capital arrives alongside a workforce reduction, while the company says it’s still hiring for selected roles.

Blackbird has repeatedly called Heidi the fastest-growing company in its portfolio, ahead of graphic design software provider Canva, which announced more than 1,000 job cuts that week. On Thursday, Blackbird said it supported “this difficult decision to drive the business on the markets and products where it can have the most impact.” It added that affected employees had helped build Heidi and that it would use its network to help them find their next role, including within its portfolio.

The cuts followed co-founder Waleed Mussa’s departure from his operational role overseeing finance, compliance and corporate affairs. On LinkedIn on Wednesday, Mussa wrote that he was stepping back to spend time with his family and would stay for the next couple of weeks to finish work from the company’s recent fundraising. “Tom, the board and I have recognised our teenage child has now matured and as Heidi enters this next phase of growth and scale, the timing is right for this transition,” he wrote.

Co-founder Yu Liu, who built Heidi’s technology, will move into an advisory role focused on models and hardware until the end of March. Kelly wrote that Mussa and Liu had built Heidi with him and that it would be “really hard for all of us to continue without them,” adding that they were leaving for different reasons.

A Fight Over the Tools

The job cuts come amid a public dispute with Best Practice, the Sonic Healthcare-backed company whose Bp Premier software is used by many Australian GPs. That week, Best Practice warned customers that using Heidi’s new AI agent platform, Heidi II, with Bp Premier would breach its licence conditions, citing patient safety and data integrity. Kelly said Best Practice’s position raised “concerns of anticompetitive conduct.” Best Practice chief executive Craig Hodges rejected that claim. Best Practice is an investor in Heidi rival Lyrebird Health.

In September, Kelly said Heidi needed to keep improving its own models, “otherwise we wouldn’t be able to keep giving the product away for free, as we’ve seen Canva and others struggle to do.” On Wednesday, Canva said it would cut 1,271 jobs, or 22 per cent of its workforce, after growth slowed for the first time in a decade amid the rapid rise of AI. Atlassian cut 1,600 jobs in March, and WiseTech Global announced 2,000 cuts the same month. At Heidi, the company’s chosen markets and investments now define which roles remain necessary.