a day ago
Exclusive: Autonomize AI gets $28M for health agents
Autonomize AI, a provider of AI agents to health systems and plans, raised $28 million in Series A funding, CEO Ganesh Padmanabhan tells Axios exclusively.
The big picture: It's the latest sign of investor appetite for infrastructure-layer AI in health care — especially platforms that promise scale, compliance, and a clear ROI.
Follow the money: Autonomize plans to expand deployment of its "Copilot" AI agents across payers, providers, and life sciences organizations.
Valtruis, Cigna Ventures, and Tau Ventures led the round, joined by previous investors Asset Management Ventures, ATX Venture Partners, and Capital Factory.
The Series A provides 24-month runway, though the company could raise before then, Padmanabhan says.
How it works: Austin-based Autonomize's agentic AI platform stitches together pre-trained agents for tasks like benefits verification, care planning, and chart review.
The company uses a human-in-the-loop model and offers explainability and compliance features — two key factors for success in health care.
Most of its customers are payors, followed by value-based care providers and syndicated health plans.
Between the lines: Autonomize was built specifically for the highly regulated business of health care, per Padmanabhan.
"I've met nurses who have a 400-page binder on their desk that they still refer to before making adjudication decisions within health plans," says Padmanabhan. "There's no way an AI agent is going to find that because that data, that knowledge, is not digitized."
What they're saying: "The way the technology is configured is, you set up an agent for a particular use case and it's reusable for others," says Valtruis managing director Mike Spadafore.
"A lot of these workflows are made up of 15, 20 different steps that you assemble into different workflows," Spadafore adds, noting Autonomize's repeatability was attractive.
"A complex workflow, like care management or like prior authorization, is actually multiple sub workflows," Padmanabhan says. A benefit check is one example —where users are looking at patient information across multiple documents.
Reality check: The market is flooded with "AI for health care" startups, but most are still struggling to show meaningful, repeatable results.
