Trump officials take aim at Coalition for Health AI, as Amazon drops out

Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech’s promise. He’s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.

The Trump administration is escalating its efforts to weaken a tech industry-funded group seeking to help shape the nation’s use of artificial intelligence in health care.

The Coalition for Health AI, or CHAI, is made up of some of the country’s biggest names in health care and technology, including Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Mayo Clinic. But the administration has been increasingly vocal in arguing that such industry giants will try to impede startups and competition through excessive regulatory proposals, rather than acting as responsible custodians of a technology that holds both potential and risks.

“We must not let the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) build a regulatory cartel,” health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote this week on X, echoing a recent editorial blasting the industry group written by two other senior health officials, deputy health secretary Jim O’Neill and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary.

And as the Trump administration attacks CHAI, there’s evidence that some key companies’ support for the group may be fraying.