Agentic AI company Hyro closed a $45 million funding round led by Healthier Capital on Tuesday, bringing its fundraising total to $95 million. The New York City-based startup aims to fill healthcare’s conversational gap, where most chatbots fail and patient expectations keep rising.
The company was founded in 2018 on the belief that healthcare deserves AI agents as capable, reliable and responsible as the people delivering care, said CEO Israel Krush.
“We started as a small team in New York focused on conversational AI, inspired by my son organically requesting from our car ‘Alexa, play music’ after the cause-effect behavior was learned at home and now expected. It was clear the next generation would demand easy and instant access to entertainment, services, and most importantly, healthcare,” he explained.
Many patients expect instant, digital-first access to care, but most health systems fail to provide this, Kush stated. The majority of providers rely on basic chatbots and siloed apps that “can’t handle real-world complexity,” he remarked.
Hyro’s technology seeks to improve this by automating routine conversations and workflows. Kush described the company’s agents as “an AI teammate” that health systems can trust to communicate with their patients.
“We form a strong shield around the contact center of the health systems we work with in order to protect staff from high call and chat volumes,” he declared.
The agents understand natural language whether it’s spoken or typed, and they connect securely to a hospital’s EHR as well as its systems for scheduling and billing, Kush added.
When a patient asks to book an appointment, refill a prescription or check their coverage, Hyro’s agents either complete the task automatically or hand it off to a live agent along with full context. They work across phone calls, text messages, web chat and mobile apps, which means patients can get help no matter which way they choose to reach out, Kush said.
“We prioritize velocity and time to deploy, which is less than 120 days even for complex voice AI implementations. We’re also heavily focused on reducing the cost of ownership, as well as limiting any kinds of hesitation or fear around AI agent deployments by adhering to the strictest of safeguards and safety mechanisms,” he stated.
Hyro’s core customers are health systems and hospitals, including Intermountain Healthcare, Bon Secours Mercy Health, Hackensack Meridian Health, Baptist Health and Sutter Health.
Across its customer base, the startup automates up to 85% of routine patient interactions — and this has reduced contact center operational costs between 35-45%, according to Kush.
He highlighted Baptist Health as an example of a customer that has witnessed a measurable ROI after adopting Hyro’s technology. Aaron Miri, Baptist’s chief digital and information officer, said that Hyro’s workflow automation quickly saved his health system “almost a million dollars.”
Kush pointed to Intermountain’s deployment as another success story. Within a year, Hyro’s agents reduced call abandonment by 88% and automated 44% of all repetitive calls. Now, 79% of visitors to Intermountain’s website are able to successfully self-serve online, he explained.
In the market, Hyro competes with several players across contact center AI and automation, including Microsoft’s Nuance, Notable and Amwell, Kush said. In his eyes, many of Hyro’s competitors are built around “shiny demos” — whereas Hyro is more committed to battletesting its technology against complex workflows and making sure its platform is deeply interoperable with systems like Epic and Salesforce.
“What sets Hyro apart is that we’re purpose-built for healthcare workflows, not a generic AI platform adapted to it. Our agents integrate deeply into clinical and operational systems with production-grade interoperability, which includes EHRs and CRMs, and have built-in safeguards that protect health systems against any type of potential hazards that exist within LLM-exclusive deployments,” Kush remarked.
To him, Hyro is helping advance a broader shift in healthcare toward AI systems that can handle complexity, not just conversations.
Photo: Vertigo3d, Getty Images
