Heidi Health is cutting about 18% of its global team, weeks after a funding round valued it at $1.26 billion and in the same week two of its three co-founders said they were stepping back. "I have some hard news to share. Today we're reducing Heidi's headcount by 18%," chief executive Dr Thomas Kelly wrote on LinkedIn.
Dr Kelly set out the changes in a note dated 4 November on Heidi's website. It gives a percentage and no number of people. Capital Brief reported the layoffs are "expected to heavily impact" the Melbourne-based research and development team, along with customer support and sales. Canva told staff the same day that 1,271 people, or 22% of its workforce, will be affected by a restructure.
What Dr Kelly told people
On LinkedIn he wrote that "we weren't putting our investment into the right teams and markets to make the most of our continuing growth". "It's painful, but it's what we need to do now to continue growing quickly and deliver on our plans for next year," he wrote. The post ends with a line to staff. "To the team, I know today is really hard, but we'll show the world this wasn't for nothing."
The note says the changes mean "bringing more customer support into product", "bringing R&D together in one roadmap" and "giving our new product businesses clearer ownership and dedicated teams". It also told staff how they would find out. "If you have not received an invitation, your role is not affected by these changes." People affected will meet individually with their leader and their local People team, it says, and a session next week will cover "the structure, priorities and path forward".
What "above the minimum" means in Australia
Dr Kelly wrote that Heidi would pay "severance above the minimum required in every country". The note says packages "vary by country" and "exceed statutory requirements in every location". Neither gives a figure.
The Australian minimum under the National Employment Standards, set out by the Fair Work Ombudsman, is four weeks' pay after one year of service, six weeks after two years and eight weeks after four years. It reaches 11 weeks at six years. It is paid at the base rate, with bonuses left out. People with less than 12 months' service usually get no redundancy pay. Capital Brief said Heidi was founded six years ago.
The careers page
Heidi's careers page showed 59 listings when we read it on 5 November, the day after the note. Six were expressions of interest. The team it labels GTM, short for go-to-market, had 28 listings. Engineering had nine, marketing six and customer experience three. The note says Heidi is "investing in expanding our products, markets and team".
The money
Heidi raised $475 million in September, SmartCompany reported, made up of a $140 million Series C led by Blackbird and $335 million committed by General Catalyst through its Customer Value Fund. The $1.26 billion valuation compares with $704 million after its Series B in October 2025. SmartCompany reported the Melbourne-born platform has supported 175 million patient visits across 190 countries. The note says it now supports "three million patient interactions every week".
The $335 million buys no shares and is tied to selling. SmartCompany said the fund "underwrites a company's spending on sales and marketing" in return for a share of the revenue that spending generates. The Medical Republic called it "debt not equity", with each draw "requiring demonstrated milestones". Startup Daily called it "a debt facility for customer acquisition".
The co-founders
Dr Kelly said chief technology officer Yu Liu and co-founder Waleed Mussa are "leaving for different reasons, with their transitions happening over the coming weeks and months", The Medical Republic reported. "Waleed and Yu built Heidi with me, and it's going to be really hard for all of us to continue without them," he wrote on LinkedIn.
Mussa will leave his operational role within weeks to spend "some long-overdue time with his family after so many late nights and weeks away". Liu "will transition into an advisory role focused on models and hardware through the end of March next year".
The fight with Best Practice
The cuts come less than a week after the country's most-used GP software said running Heidi's newest product breaches its licence. Heidi II launched in late September. Its AI agents "take the keyboard and the mouse", in Dr Kelly's words, moving through a clinic's practice management system under the doctor's own login to pull a patient's history before a consult.
On 29 October Best Practice chief executive Craig Hodges told users that running Heidi II with its Bp Premier software breaches the licence agreement, The Medical Republic reported. "Using Heidi II without patient consent seriously risks breaching the Privacy Act," he wrote. Best Practice is also updating its agreement to say "the use of bots, scraping tools, and robotic process automation is not permitted".
Dr Kelly said he rejected "some of the implicit and explicit claims" in that email and that Best Practice was limiting clinician choice. He said Heidi had tried for three years to integrate with Best Practice without reasonable access.
On 2 November The Medical Republic reported that Heidi's own terms bar "any automated means (including bots, scrapers, or scripts)" from accessing its platform. Heidi's chief medical officer Dr Simon Kos called the clause "a pretty standard term on cloud platforms" and said it would be updated.
The contractual risk sits with the practice that logs in, The Medical Republic said in its explainer, and it described the regulatory status of tools like this as "far from settled".
What we don't know
Heidi has not said how many of the roles are in Australia, how long the people affected have worked there or what its severance adds up to. We don't know how many of the careers page listings were added before the cuts, or whether they stay up after next week's session. Nothing we read says the dispute with Best Practice caused the cuts or either departure, or says who will take over from Liu as chief technology officer.
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