JPM — officially the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference — is basically the healthcare industry’s Davos or Coachella, with fewer Patagonia vests and more chatter about experimental drugs. The four-day investor and exec summit, with most events at the Westin St. Francis, officially starts Monday, but the pregame parties got going strong over the weekend.
While it lacks the public partying pizzazz of Salesforce’s Dreamforce, JPM pulls in around 8,000 attendees, and hundreds of power players, with big-money discussions and deals happening on the fly. Everyone’s trying to get in the room where the biotech deals happen, or meet the people who make them happen, or at least get to a party they’re at, so having the right contact book is essential. Here’s the rundown of the hottest tickets and biggest names turning up at this year’s JPM.
Sunday kicked off in exceptionally SF tech scene fashion, with a concert played by robots (opens in new tab) at the Temple nightclub. Invite-only VC soirees took place across the city. One at SFMoma was so popular that even CEOs with invitations were turned away at the door due to overcapacity issues at the museum’s theater.
The main events begin Monday with a power lunch keynote from Jamie Dimon, the $770 million-earning (opens in new tab) CEO of JPMorganChase, onstage at the Westin St. Francis (opens in new tab). Topics are TBD, but we can’t help thinking the company’s pivot to in-house AI advisers (opens in new tab) (while firing its human ones) might get a shout-out.
Early risers can catch Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, for a 9:45 a.m. keynote. Down the road at the Merchants Exchange Banking Hall, STAT, (opens in new tab) the health and life sciences publication, hosts the discussion “Healthcare at a Crossroads.” Speakers include Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Julie Tierney, the former FDA chief of staff.
Monday evening, the VIP energy shifts to the invitation-only healthcare exec dinner at Prospect. Speakers include microbiologist Susan Monarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and David Shulkin, former secretary of Veterans Affairs. For those not in that inner circle, the hot party is H7 BioCapital’s “China Night” cocktail reception (opens in new tab) aboard the historic Klamath Ferry at Pier 9.
On Tuesday, the hot ticket is a fireside chat with Vinod Khosla, the billionaire founder of Khosla Ventures, “A Shared Vision for Autonomous Clinical Care,” part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (opens in new tab) side event.
Also organized by ARPA-H is an investor panel, “Health Tech Investors on Funding the Future of Healthcare,” featuring Jay Rughani, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (opens in new tab). The company just raised $15 billion to invest (opens in new tab) in “ensuring that America wins the next 100 years of technology.”
That night, which is turning out to be a banger, there’s JPM After Hours: The Health AI Executive Summit, (opens in new tab) featuring Amy Gleason, acting administrator of DOGE; Maria Ansari, CEO of The Permanente Medical Group; and Naveen Zutshi, CIO of Databricks. But given the fever around defense tech the can’t-miss party is hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Ferocity Capital focused on biodefense. And where better to discuss biological warfare than the Exploratorium?
On Wednesday, Chelsea Clinton of the Clinton Foundation, which has raised billions to improve public health and economic opportunities, and Seema Kumar, CEO of Cure, a New York healthcare and life science campus, have a lunchtime fireside chat (opens in new tab) as part of the Goodwin + KPMG 7th annual symposium at the InterContinental San Francisco, which runs same time as JPM.
Also a must-see is BioAge’s (opens in new tab) panel at the Contemporary Jewish Museum on the next generation of GLPs; speakers include Christopher O’Donnell (the Novartis scientist – not the actor from “Batman and Robin”) and Mike Snyder, a geneticist from Stanford.
Wednesday night, a panel at the San Francisco Mint (opens in new tab)will feature Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, hosted by Katie Couric. A closing party hosted by European investment firm New Rhein Healthcare Investors at Monroe is headlined by DJ Omnaya (opens in new tab).
All week, a coveted ticket is access to BLPN Club (opens in new tab), an invite-only space for dealmakers inside the Golden Gate Yacht Club (opens in new tab). Founded by Phillip Ebner, executive director of life sciences at JPMorganChase, BLPN offers networking with high-level investors, plus free yacht rides. Because of course, you need some free yacht rides at an event like this.