Shares of Doximity surged almost 80% on Friday after the medical networking and telehealth platform missed analysts' earnings target.

You read that right. The stock jumped 79% to $36.90 ahead of the opening bell, even after Doximity's fiscal first-quarter results fell short of what Wall Street was looking for.

Shares weren't doing much until the company's earnings call, when CEO Jeff Tangney started talking about artificial intelligence.

"We're proving you can still post best-in-class software margins while investing heavily in clinical AI," he said. "We're leaning in as we see a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build the new AI age of medicine."

The company's Doximity Ask AI model outperformed U.S. rivals -- including Anthropic's Fable 5 -- in a recent study by researchers from Stanford and Harvard that evaluates medical AI tools.

Usage rates also jumped across Doximity's search and scribe AI tools over the quarter, Tangney said, with scribe note-taking users up 10-times in July from a year ago.

"We're the doctors' digital platform, and AI is just the next chapter in our growth," the CEO added.

All of that helped to overshadow slightly disappointing quarterly results.

Doximity reported adjusted earnings of 29 cents a share for the period, as revenue climbed 7% from a year ago to $156.6 million. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of 30 cents a share on revenue of $151.8 million.

For the current quarter, the company expects revenue of $170 million to $171 million. That was also a touch below what the Street had predicted.