Qventus Secures $105M in Series D Funding to Expand AI-Driven Healthcare Automation

More money comes to AI healthcare: Qventus nabs $105M at a $400M+ valuation | TechCrunch

Healthcare is proving to be one of the more lucrative industries when it comes to building AI solutions to speed up how work is carried out across clinical, research and administrative operations. Today comes one of the latest examples of how that is playing out in terms of venture funding. Qventus, a startup that builds AI-based tools to automate work across a range of healthcare scenarios -- they include surgeries, hospital discharges, and inpatient/outpatient check-ups -- has raised a Series D of $105 million. The funding -- which includes $85 million in equity and $20 million in optional debt -- will be used to develop more "AI teammates" to use across a wider set of use cases beyond the in-patient applications that helped Qventus make its name, the company said. "Debt is available as we go forward if we want to put the pedal to the metal," said CEO and co-founder Mudit Garg in an interview. "To be candid we needed neither equity nor debt but it was an opportunity." KKR is leading the funding, with previous backer Bessemer Venture Partners also participating. The round includes has a number of prominent strategic investors who are also customers of Qventus: Northwestern Medicine, HonorHealth, and Allina Health. The company's valuation is not being disclosed but we understand from sources that it is more than $400 million. Significantly, the fundraise underscores the interest that AI healthcare is attracting at the moment among investors. Just in the last few days, Cera in the U.K. announced $150 million in financing; Hippocratic raised $141 million; and Innovaccer raised $275 million. It also points to Qventus's own progress. This latest Series D is bigger than all of the startup's previous rounds put together, with PitchBook noting that Qventus had raised around $95 million before this round. Its last valuation, in 2022, was around $200 million. Garg said that Qventus has grown its number of customers four-fold since then, working out to net retention of 120%; and its core business has seen threefold growth. It is not revealing revenue figures or any other specific numbers but he added it that is "very close to breaking even." That is a detail that has become more important in recent years as startups look for more sustainable business models given that the IPO window remains relatively small, yet investors are still looking for returns. AI scribes and other kinds of AI assistants have now become relatively commonplace products in the healthcare market, so much so some AI healthcare companies might even work to distance themselves from that description to differentiate themselves. "We are not an AI scribe company," Garg said. "We do have the capacity to listen, but AI scribe is a relatively commoditised space and we focus on an area of operations where there is a huge pain point." Garg himself has a background in engineering and an MBA, both from Stanford, and he first came into contact with the potential of using automation to help in healthcare while working on a hospital project at McKinsey. Qventus itself has been around for more than 12 years, getting its start initially by applying machine learning and other kinds of automation technologies to make clinicians and other medical professionals more efficient and then expanding into further areas of development such as pharmacy operations. More recently, the developments of generative AI have pushed it closer to building solutions that are more responsive to what clinicians are working on in real time. "If you think of where care teams are doing in 'below license tasks,'" he said, referring to admin work that is part and parcel of clinical work these days, "machine learning has already been in this space for twelve years." Generative AI, he said, has helped bring more unstructured data into the mix to improve how AI tools can be used to help clinicians carry out more of that admin work, "emailing and faxing far beyond [what an AI scribe can do] to take the burden off the user." We're likely to see more activity in the AI healthcare space in the coming year, both in terms of fundraises for the most promising companies, as well as M&A to consolidate the field. "Qventus is at the intersection of themes that KKR has spent extensive time evaluating across both our Technology and Health Care teams," Jake Heller, a partner and head tech growth, Americas, at KKR, told TechCrunch. "The company is at a key growth moment, especially during this time where health systems are adopting technology more and more to drive efficiency. The company's technology meaningfully alleviates care orchestration and administrative burdens for physicians and medical staff, which allows providers to focus on delivering the best care to patients."

Qventus Latest Healthcare AI Startup To Raise Big

Healthcare startups using artificial intelligence have come out of the gate hot in the new year when it comes to fundraising. AI-based healthcare automation software Qventus is the latest example, with the New York-based startup locking up a $105 million investment led by KKR. It has been reported the round is made up of $85 million in equity and $20 million in optional debt at a $400 million valuation. The round also included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Northwestern Medicine, HonorHealth and Allina Health. Qventus' platform tries to address operational inefficiencies in both inpatient and outpatient settings using generative AI, machine learning and behavioural science. The platform predicts operational challenges, recommends remedies and automates workflows. "Across the country, healthcare teams have to do extraordinary things to get ordinary things done every single day," said co-founder and CEO Mudit Garg in a release. "Qventus has dedicated the last decade to building AI automation solutions that alleviate the administrative burden of healthcare staff so they can deliver highly reliable patient care." Founded in 2012, the company has raised more than $200 million, per Crunchbase. Qventus is not the only healthcare AI startup to raise big early this year. Just last week, San Francisco-based Innovaccer -- which helps healthcare organizations by providing software solutions that aim to improve patient experience and reduce the administrative burden on providers -- raised a $275 million round that was a combination of primary and secondary. Investors included B Capital and Kaiser Permanente. Also last week, Palo Alto, California-based Hippocratic AI, which develops a safety-focused large language model for healthcare, safety and accuracy, raised a $141 million Series B valuing the company at $1.6 billion. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins.

Qventus raises $105M to alleviate burdens on healthcare staff with AI - SiliconANGLE

Qventus raises $105M to alleviate burdens on healthcare staff with AI Artificial intelligence-based health system provider Qventus Inc. today announced it has raised $105 million in a late-stage funding led by global investment firm KRR to expand its product portfolio that automates work for care workers to help them attend to patients instead of paperwork. Additional participation for the Series D round came from Bessemer Venture Partners, and new strategic investors, including leading health systems Northwestern Medicine, HonorHealth and Allina Health. The company said the substantial capital infusion will be used to help it transform healthcare outcomes using AI-driven solutions and "operational assistants" that can identify bottlenecks and act as AI teammates. Current healthcare systems face challenges such as staff shortages, fragmented procedures and manual processes that leave staff overworked and often overburdened with administrative tasks that take their attention off their main goal, which should be patient care. Qventus says that it provides an AI-driven system that helps relieve this by automating many of these tasks by using generative AI, machine learning and behavioral science in both in-patient and out-patient settings to predict issues before they arise. Nurses, doctors and administrators can use the system to input, track and analyze patient care using AI tools that help them coordinate, plan and get the details right. "Across the country, healthcare teams have to do extraordinary things to get ordinary things done every single day," said Mudit Garg, chief executive and co-founder of Qventus. "Qventus has dedicated the last decade to building AI automation solutions that alleviate the administrative burden of health care staff so they can deliver highly reliable patient care." The company's flagship AI-powered services include operational assistants that assist with inpatient capacity services and surgical intake that assist with calls, automating follow-ups, data retrieval, writing memos and reports, understanding text and documents, remembering information and identifying errors in faxed reports for surgery. Assistants can also help gather info from clinics to fill out patient records during intake, work with patients and staff to move surgeries through schedules and assist with follow-ups by providing recommendations for notes or writing emails to patients. According to the company, in the last year Qventus' Inpatient Capacity Solution, which reduces the length of stay and helps open up bed capacity, eliminated over 36,000 excess days for its health system partners and saved millions of dollars. This provided the capacity to serve more patients by having a smooth, intelligent and safe discharge planning system. The company added that its Surgical Growth solution can reduce lead time for surgery, add up to 3 cases per operating room per month and reduce phone calls from surgeon's offices by 20%. "By collaborating with Qventus, Northwestern Medicine has been able to significantly address capacity and access demands for our operating rooms which has allowed our patients quicker access to care," said Doug King, senior vice president and chief information officer, at Northwestern Medicine, a non-profit healthcare system affiliated with the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Qventus said that it intends to continue its mission and build on its systems that use AI systems to assist healthcare workers to do their jobs more efficiently with less administrative burden. This helps reduce burnout among staff who are already beleaguered by long hours and rough work conditions and improves the quality of care for patients overall. Qventus added last year it greatly increased its stable of health system partners and expanded its team globally. With that foundation and the new funding, the company said it intends to expand its AI assistants across more health system departments and into more parts of the patient care journey.

Qventus Announces $105 Million Investment, Series D Led by KKR By Investing.com

The investment supports development and expansion of first-to-market AI Operational Assistants, extending the platform even further across clinical operations NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Qventus, a leading provider of AI-based care automation software for health systems, today announced a $105 million investment led by global investment firm KKR, with additional participation from world-renowned investment firm Bessemer Venture Partners, and new strategic investors, including leading health systems Northwestern (NASDAQ:NWE) Medicine, HonorHealth, and Allina Health. Qventus has built an AI-first care operations automation platform deployed across leading health systems in inpatient and outpatient settings. This funding accelerates the Company's ability to provide AI-based automations and AI operational assistants in more care settings, building upon the success of its existing offerings like Qventus' Surgical Growth and Inpatient Capacity solutions as well as new solutions built on its first-to-market AI Operational Assistants platform capability. Hospital executives, providers, and frontline staff are overburdened by manual, fragmented, and antiquated processes, which create challenges to achieving their mission of providing excellent care to patients in their communities. Despite having top-of-the-line therapies, clinicians and equipment, healthcare systems are hindered by inefficiencies related to administrative tasks like scheduling, higher costs, and more, which collectively cost the healthcare system billions of dollars every year. In turn, reducing staff burnout from administrative tasks and enhancing productivity have become mission-critical for health systems. Qventus' transformative solutions and AI teammates help health systems combat these challenges by intelligently automating operations and end-to-end workflows across care settings. Across the country, healthcare teams have to do extraordinary things to get ordinary things done every single day. Qventus has dedicated the last decade to building AI automation solutions that alleviate the administrative burden of healthcare staff so they can deliver highly reliable patient care. This funding is a testament to how these solutions generate best-in-industry return on investment, helping health systems achieve the margins needed to fulfill their mission of delivering exceptional care to their communities, said Mudit Garg, CEO and Co-Founder of Qventus. This capital primes us to continue maximizing our growth, delivering on our promises to our partners, and launching new, game-changing technology. Qventus will leverage this funding to accelerate the development and commercialization of solutions powered by its AI Operational Assistants into new care settings beyond its Surgical Growth and Inpatient Capacity solutions. Enhancing team productivity by up to 50 percent, these AI teammates work alongside care teams to reduce the administrative burden, identify potential issues upstream, surface suggested interventions, and take action to solve problems for busy staff. Built on a solid foundation, Qventus has navigated the evolving care landscape and emerged resilient, thanks to its sophisticated technology and proprietary data engine built over the last decade, said Jake Heller, Partner and Head of Tech Growth Equity, Americas at KKR. We believe Qventus is well-positioned to be a market leader in supporting care delivery at the provider level and redefining the future of health care by supporting hospital systems in operating more efficiently so they can focus on what really matters"quality care for patients. Since its inception in 2012, Qventus has built a suite of AI solutions to address health system pain points across care settings. In the last year alone, Qventus' Inpatient Capacity solution, which reduces the length of stay and creates capacity, eliminated over 36,000 excess days for its health system partners, saving them millions of dollars and helping them create the capacity to serve more patients in their communities. The company's Surgical Growth solution drives strategic surgical volume for hospitals, generating $95M in annualized contribution margin in 2024 through Qventus enabled cases. This year alone, Qventus' platform touched more than half a million surgeries and drove 35% more robotic cases using its technology to spot gaps of time available, helping patients receive the critical care they need. By collaborating with Qventus, Northwestern Medicine has been able to significantly address capacity and access demands for our operating rooms which has allowed our patients quicker access to care, said Doug King, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Northwestern Medicine. By deploying Qventus' solutions, Northwestern Medicine is able to reduce the burden on our clinical teams and allow them to turn their focus to caring for our patients. This financing follows a year of significant growth for Qventus, increasing its cadre of health system partners and expanding its team globally. The company received an impressive overall KLAS score of 92.5 percent (as of November 1, 2024) in the capacity management segment, in which 100 percent of customers included Qventus as a part of their long-term plans. Last month, Qventus additionally took home Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Customer Value Leadership Award for its commitment to providing best-in-class solutions that generate an average of over 10x return on investment for its hospital and health system clients. KKR is funding this investment primarily from its Next (LON:NXT) Generation Technology III Fund. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. served as legal advisor to Qventus, Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal advisor to KKR and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati served as legal advisor to Bessemer Venture Partners. About Qventus For more than a decade, Qventus has been at the forefront as a provider of AI-based software automating care operations in both OR and inpatient settings. By deeply understanding the challenges faced by healthcare providers and applying modern technologies and principles proven in other industries, we empower care teams to make smarter decisions and optimize patient flow, while reducing the cognitive load on team members and improving the patient experience. Our solutions not only deliver meaningful returns but have also recently achieved the highest KLAS rating, creating a competitive edge for our clients, including health systems, independent hospitals, and academic medical centers. By integrating with EHRs, the Qventus platform leverages GenerativeAI, machine learning, and behavioral science to predict operational bottlenecks, recommend remedies, and automate processes. Explore more at www.qventus.com. About KKR KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and supporting growth in its portfolio companies and communities. KKR sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR's insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of Global Atlantic Financial Group. References to KKR's investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds and insurance subsidiaries. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: NYSE:KKR), please visit KKR's website at www.kkr.com. For additional information about Global Atlantic Financial Group, please visit Global Atlantic Financial Group's website at www.globalatlantic.com.