DeepIntent on September 10, 2026 opened Cora, a conversational software layer it calls the first fully agentic marketing platform built for healthcare, to all of its clients as an open beta. The New York company, which built its business on programmatic buying software for pharmaceutical marketers, is using the product to push into market research, forecasting and linear television, a long way from the auction pipes where it started.

In Short

DeepIntent, a company that places ads for drug makers, has opened an AI system called Cora that lets marketers type plain-language requests to research markets, build audiences and set up campaigns. It matters to pharmaceutical brands and their agencies, which spend heavily on reaching patients and doctors under strict health privacy rules. Any DeepIntent client can now try it, but the speed figures come from the company's own customer survey and closely match numbers it attached to a different AI product in June.

What Cora is built to do

The pitch is consolidation. Pharmaceutical marketers typically move between separate research tools, data sets and buying systems before a campaign reaches the market. According to DeepIntent, Cora gathers intelligence, data and execution into one interface. The company lists five capabilities.

Agents directed in plain language

Marketers instruct purpose-built agents in natural language to interrogate healthcare data, define patient and healthcare provider audiences, and move from analysis to activation without advanced technical or programmatic expertise, according to DeepIntent. That is the core of the agentic AI claim: software that carries out multi-step tasks on instruction rather than simply returning a chart.

The release is thin on mechanics. It does not name the language model or models underneath, state how many agents exist, describe what each is permitted to do, or say whether any agent can commit budget without a person signing off.

Channels beyond programmatic

The second capability is the one with the clearest commercial edge. According to DeepIntent, healthcare marketers will be able to forecast, plan and activate audiences across channels within one platform, and not only in programmatic media. New integrations, including one with VideoAmp for linear TV planning and forecasting, take Cora beyond the scope of a traditional demand-side platform, the company says.

The wording matters. DeepIntent describes the VideoAmp link in terms of planning and forecasting; the release does not say that national or local linear spots can be bought through Cora itself. The word "including" also implies further integrations that are not named.

VideoAmp is a known quantity to television buyers. It signed a multi-year measurement deal with Warner Bros. Discovery in July 2025 covering linear, digital and cross-platform campaigns. Its standing as a currency provider is less settled: MediaPost reported on July 13, 2026 that VideoAmp had withdrawn from the Media Rating Council's accreditation process, with plans to reassess in 2027.

A continuous feed of signals

Cora is also designed to surface insights on an ongoing basis across campaigns, competitors, clinical developments, market conditions and media signals, according to DeepIntent, so that campaigns can be adjusted faster. Which sources feed the "clinical developments" and competitor strands is not specified.

New data inside Helix

Cora draws on DeepIntent Helix, the healthcare marketing cloud the company unveiled in March. With the Cora release, according to DeepIntent, Helix now incorporates payer and formulary signals and richer diagnostic data. DeepIntent calls Helix "the industry's richest and most trusted healthcare marketing cloud," a superlative the release does not support with third-party evidence.

The additions are more consequential than the adjectives around them. A formulary is the list of drugs a health plan covers and on what terms; payer data describes the insurers making those decisions. For a brand marketer, knowing that a prescriber's patient base sits largely under plans that restrict a therapy changes where money is worth spending. Diagnostic data sits closer still to the individual patient.

That proximity raises questions the release does not answer. It does not identify where the payer, formulary or diagnostic data comes from, what de-identification standard is applied, or how the data is kept separate from the conversational layer. The Cora release also does not use the word HIPAA, although DeepIntent's March and June announcements were framed around compliance with the US health privacy law; the boilerplate refers only to privacy-safe marketing. The cost of getting health data wrong in advertising now has a published price tag: Grindr agreed to pay £26 million to about 12,000 UK users over HIV data sent to ad partners.

Shared workspaces

The fifth element is organisational. Cora adds live, project-based workspaces where marketers, agencies and AI agents work from a shared view of planning, activation and optimisation, according to DeepIntent. Teams can collaborate across brands and agencies and manage approvals and workflows inside those spaces. It is the only governance mechanism the release describes.

The survey behind the speed figure

The numbers carry most of the weight in the announcement, and they appear in two different forms.

In the capabilities section, DeepIntent states that in beta testing Cora reduced the time consumed by marketing planning by 50%, with over 95% of customers reporting drastically faster workflows. Later, the release gives the source: a survey of 275 customers in a closed beta earlier this year, in which 95% reported drastically faster times for research, planning and campaign activation, "with reported reductions of 50% or more in time."

The second version is the more precise one. It describes self-reported perceptions from a customer survey, not a measured change in elapsed time. DeepIntent does not disclose the questions asked, who conducted the survey, when exactly the closed beta ran, how many customers were invited, what share of the 95% reported reductions of 50% or more, or what baseline durations were used. No absolute figures appear. A plan that took four weeks and one that took four hours would both register the same percentage.

Nor does the release say who the 275 respondents were. DeepIntent said in March that it serves more than 600 brands, more than 10 top global pharmaceutical companies and over 50 agencies. Whether the survey counted brands, agencies or individual users inside them is not stated.

One further statistic sits unsourced. According to DeepIntent, more than 60% of drug treatments fail to meet their forecasted commercial goals. The release offers no citation, study name or time period for that figure.

Three months after Helix AI

The more striking context comes from DeepIntent's own recent history. On June 15, 2026, the company released Helix AI, which it then described as the first agentic AI system purpose-built for healthcare marketers. That product also used natural language to query prescriber and patient data, build audiences and push them to DeepIntent's buying platform or to social platforms. It also produced cross-channel forecasts. And it also came with a beta result: agencies that used it shortened their planning cycles by half, according to DeepIntent at the time. Full client access began that day.

Is Cora a new product, or a wider version of the June one? The Cora release does not mention Helix AI, and it does not say whether Cora replaces it, renames it, absorbs it or runs alongside it. Two products, 87 days apart, have now each been presented as the first of their kind for healthcare marketers, each with a 50% figure attached. The June beta was described as agency-led; the September survey covers 275 customers. Whether the two betas tested the same software is unclear.

What Cora adds, on the evidence of the two releases, is a specific list: the VideoAmp link into linear television, the payer, formulary and diagnostic data, the shared workspaces, the continuous insight feed and the "fully" in the positioning. The claim that marketers can forecast, plan and activate across channels in one platform "for the first time" also needs reading narrowly. StackAdapt's self-serve NPI targeting product, released on January 6, 2026, already let pharmaceutical advertisers forecast, build provider segments and activate across connected TV, display, native, audio and video inside a single platform. The distinction DeepIntent is drawing rests on media outside programmatic, and linear TV is the only such channel it names.

Twelve months of building outward

Cora is the latest step in a run of announcements that has steadily widened what DeepIntent sells. In August 2025, the company added its HealthFirst FAST package, citing internal analysis that 77% of healthcare providers were reachable through free ad-supported streaming channels. A month later came the HealthFirst Audio package, with inventory from iHeartMedia and SiriusXM Media.

March 19, 2026 marked a structural shift. At its AdLab forum in New York, DeepIntent opened Helix to third parties, a HIPAA-compliant data environment covering 3.7 million providers and 240 million patient lives, with MCP support. By June the company was citing nearly 4 million providers and 250 million patient lives for the same foundation. The Cora release gives no scale figures at all.

Supply followed data. In late May, DeepIntent closed three supply deals in a single week with OptimizeRx, epocrates and Lane4.io, bringing electronic health record placements into programmatic buying. On June 9 it added verified live sports inventory for pharmaceutical buyers, built on an AI data centre environment it calls AEGIS 1. On August 18, Vistar Media's digital out-of-home screens arrived in the platform, extending the company's point-of-care media reach into pharmacies and transit hubs.

Each of those moves added inventory or data to the buying platform. Cora is different in kind. It sits above the buying platform and reaches toward the planning work that agencies and in-house strategy teams have traditionally owned, including linear television budgets that never touched DeepIntent's systems.

What the agencies said

Three healthcare agencies are quoted in the release. None of them attaches a number to the experience.

Dave Leitner, EVP and Head of Media at EVERSANA INTOUCH, described the cost of bringing a product to market. "It takes an incredible amount of time, resources and data to launch a new treatment or therapy into the market," Leitner said. He added that the agency found Cora helpful in producing "a clearer picture of realistic launch outcomes" and in informing media investment decisions from the start.

Bill Veltre, identified in the release as Chief Media Officer at Deerfield Group, pointed to fragmentation. "Navigating the healthcare ecosystem with disconnected data sets, fragmented channels and measurement tools can be complex. We've seen clients get stuck on connecting insights to action," Veltre said. Deerfield was among the first partners to build on Helix in March, when DeepIntent's announcement listed Veltre as EVP and Head of Media at Deerfield; the change in title between the two releases is not explained.

Kristy Quagliariello, VP of Programmatic Media at Klick Health, spoke to volume. "Our team deals with billions of programmatic media impressions every day for our healthcare clients," she said. "So being able to easily aggregate and quickly analyze all that data using DeepIntent's Cora agentic platform delivers a lot of value." Quagliariello had also commented on DeepIntent's FAST package in August 2025.

The two agencies quoted on Helix AI in June, Havas Media Network North America and Fingerpaint Marketing, do not appear in the Cora release.

Chris Paquette, DeepIntent's founder and chief executive, framed the product as a move away from the company's origins. "For over a decade, DeepIntent has built a platform with a singular focus on healthcare. With Cora, we are expanding beyond programmatic advertising and unlocking the value of agentic AI for strategy, planning, and activation across channels," Paquette said. He went further on outcomes: "In doing so, Cora will help pharma brands and their agencies bring more treatments to market successfully, while improving the quality of life for the patients they serve."

A market slow to hand over the keys

Agentic features have become standard issue across advertising technology in 2026. Yahoo DSP put AI agents into campaign setup, troubleshooting and optimisation on January 6, 2026. Sabio and Gentoro said on August 26 that their agents would run internal campaign management first, before any self-serve interface reached advertisers, with no timeline disclosed. The structural worry for platforms was set out as early as July 2025, when Ari Paparo argued that autonomous systems could absorb functions demand-side platforms currently charge for.

Buyers have been more cautious than vendors. StackAdapt's research published on August 19, 2026 found that only 6% of marketers act on in-platform AI recommendations, drawing on a NewtonX survey of 500 marketing and advertising professionals and a separate poll of 187 StackAdapt clients. Ninety percent accepted AI that recommends, but only half accepted AI acting autonomously even after performance had been proven. Fragmentation, the problem Cora is pitched at, is real enough: a Mediaocean survey from January 2026 found platform fragmentation to be the largest concern for 56% of marketers, with only 10% describing their stacks as fully unified.

Cora's approval workflows suggest a human remains in the loop, though the release never says so directly. For a regulated category, that choice would be deliberate. An agent that surfaces a prescriber segment is one thing; an agent that pushes creative into a placement without medical, legal and regulatory review is another.

Why pharma buyers are paying attention

The regulatory backdrop has shifted budgets over the past year. On September 9, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration sent a wave of enforcement letters to drug companies over deceptive advertising. Video Advertising Bureau analysis of Nielsen Ad Intel data later showed that prescription drug brands spent $4.95 billion on multiscreen TV between October 2025 and March 2026, up 53% from $3.23 billion a year earlier. The enforcement had concentrated on digital channels, with 59 warning letters over brand website content against 34 untitled letters over TV advertising, and brands responded by leaning harder into television.

That pattern gives the VideoAmp integration a practical logic. If a growing share of pharmaceutical money is flowing into multiscreen television, broadcast and cable included, a platform confined to programmatic channels sees a shrinking slice of the plan. Bringing linear forecasting into the same interface as provider targeting, point-of-care screens and streaming inventory is an attempt to sit where the whole budget is decided, rather than where part of it is executed.

The competitive stakes follow from that. Agencies such as the three quoted in the release have long held the cross-channel planning role. A platform vendor that offers workspaces for brands and agencies, shared data and agent-generated plans is building a surface that could make the vendor more central to those decisions. DeepIntent presents the workspaces as collaborative. How agencies price their planning work once a vendor's software claims to compress it by half is a question the release leaves open.

What remains undisclosed

Several points a buyer would expect in a product of this kind are absent from the announcement. There is no pricing and no indication of whether Cora carries a separate fee from DeepIntent's media and data charges. The release gives no date for general availability. It does not specify geographic scope. It does not describe external agent access, even though Helix was presented with MCP support in March. And it does not explain the relationship between Cora and Helix AI, the product DeepIntent positioned as a first of its kind less than three months earlier.

The open beta at least means the claims can now be tested across DeepIntent's full client base rather than a closed group. Whether the survey percentages hold across that wider population has not yet been shown.

Timeline

Summary

Who: DeepIntent, a New York healthcare advertising technology company led by founder and chief executive Chris Paquette, with comments from EVERSANA INTOUCH, Deerfield Group and Klick Health. VideoAmp is named as an integration partner.

What: DeepIntent opened Cora, described by the company as the first fully agentic marketing platform for healthcare, as an open beta for all clients. Cora lets marketers direct AI agents in natural language, plan across channels including linear TV through VideoAmp, receive continuous insights, work in shared workspaces with approval flows, and draw on Helix data now extended with payer, formulary and richer diagnostic signals. In a survey of 275 closed-beta customers, 95% reported drastically faster research, planning and activation, with reported time reductions of 50% or more.

When: The announcement was dated September 10, 2026. The closed beta and survey took place earlier in 2026, on dates not disclosed. It follows the June 15, 2026 release of Helix AI, which carried a similar "first" claim and 50% beta figure.

Where: The announcement was issued from New York. The release does not state geographic availability.

Why: DeepIntent argues that increasingly specialised treatments and fragmented tools make it harder for pharmaceutical brands to reach narrow patient and provider populations, citing an unsourced claim that more than 60% of drug treatments miss forecasted commercial goals. The move also positions the company above its buying platform, closer to the cross-channel planning decisions, including television budgets, that agencies have traditionally controlled.