Baba has raised $40 million in Series A funding to expand its AI healthcare navigation platform for Medicare and Medicaid patients. The New York-based company plans to use the funding to expand its clinical care teams, advance AI research, and grow partnerships with health plans. FirstMark Capital led the round, with CVS Health Ventures and Valtruis participating. Returning investors General Catalyst, Genius Ventures and Ground Up Ventures also participated. Baba combines licensed clinicians, care coordinators and artificial intelligence to help patients and families manage complex healthcare needs. Its model supports people across medical, financial, social, and behavioural health needs.
AI Healthcare Navigation Targets Complex Care
Baba focuses on the challenges patients and families face when navigating multiple parts of the healthcare system. Medicare patients may need to coordinate appointments, insurance benefits, prescriptions, medical bills and communication among different providers. Families may also have to handle many of these tasks on behalf of a relative. Baba uses AI to assist with parts of this administrative work while keeping human care professionals involved. The company says its approach is meant to help patients get the care they need and manage the processes around it.
According to Baba, the company has worked with more than 10,000 patients and families. It also says more than 100,000 people are on its waiting list. Connor Sweeney founded Baba after studying biological engineering and computer science at MIT. The company is based in New York and is focused on improving care coordination for people covered by Medicare and Medicaid.
Funding Will Expand Care Teams
Baba plans to use the new capital to expand its clinical care teams and continue developing its AI technology. The company also plans to advance AI research and grow partnerships with health plans. Those partnerships matter to its strategy because Baba is pursuing arrangements that tie healthcare payments more closely to patient outcomes.
FirstMark said Baba brings together care coordinators, licensed therapists and AI agents. The investment firm described the model as an AI native care team designed to combine automated assistance with human support. The investment announcement provides more detail on the financing and Baba’s strategy. The funding gives Baba additional resources as healthcare organisations look for ways to manage complex care more efficiently. For Baba, the opportunity is not simply to automate individual administrative tasks. The company aims to support patients through longer, more complex care processes.
BabaBench Tests AI Agents
Baba is also developing BabaBench, a benchmark designed to evaluate how AI systems handle extended patient advocacy tasks. The benchmark focuses on multistep tasks that require multiple interactions. These include paperwork, calls with insurers, and follow-up on medical billing. Baba said the benchmark is intended to assess whether AI agents can complete these workflows while following appropriate safeguards. The company has published information about the benchmark through its BabaBench research. The project examines how AI systems perform when they must manage longer healthcare-related tasks rather than answer a single question. That distinction is important for healthcare applications. A system may produce a correct answer but still fail if it cannot complete the necessary steps or handle permissions appropriately. Baba said it submitted its benchmark as a preprint to arXiv and was accepted for presentation at an upcoming NeurIPS workshop. The company is using the research to explore how AI agents can operate in areas where tasks may continue for days or weeks.
AI and Human Care Work Together
Baba’s model keeps human professionals involved rather than presenting AI as a complete replacement for care teams. The company’s approach combines technology with care coordinators and licensed therapists. AI can handle repetitive administrative work, while human professionals remain involved when judgment, communication, or patient support is required. That model reflects the complexity of healthcare navigation. Patients may need help understanding insurance requirements, coordinating providers, or resolving administrative problems that a single automated response can’t handle. Baba is also developing technology for more extended workflows. This could allow AI agents to handle routine steps while escalating situations that require human attention.
TechAmerica.ai has previously examined how agentic AI is moving into healthcare, including the potential for AI systems to manage multistep workflows while keeping humans involved when decisions become more complex.
CMS ACCESS Model Expands Opportunity
Baba’s growth strategy also includes participation in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ACCESS Model.CMS selected Baba in June to participate in the model across all four clinical tracks, according to the company. The 10-year program is designed to test technology-supported chronic care and outcome-aligned payment approaches. The ACCESS Model gives Baba another opportunity to apply its technology within an outcomes-focused healthcare payment framework. That matters because expanding AI healthcare navigation requires more than developing the technology itself. Healthcare companies also need sustainable models to pay for care coordination and the people who deliver it. Baba is pursuing value-based arrangements with health plans as part of its broader business strategy. The company says its partnerships with health plans, academic institutions, nonprofit organisations and government agencies are intended to help expand access to its services.
Partnerships Support Expansion
Baba has partnered with organisations including the American Stroke Foundation and the American Breast Cancer Foundation. These relationships give the company opportunities to work with populations facing complex medical and social needs. The company is also building relationships with health plans. Those partnerships could become increasingly important as Baba expands its services beyond individual patient relationships.
Its approach is based on the idea that healthcare navigation can be integrated into broader care programs rather than treated as a separate service. This could let Baba reach more patients while giving health plans another tool to help members coordinate care.
The Challenge of Scaling Care
Baba’s funding provides capital for expansion, but scaling healthcare coordination remains difficult. Patients have different medical conditions, insurance arrangements and personal circumstances. Administrative requirements also vary across health plans, providers, and government programs. That complexity makes healthcare automation different from deploying a general-purpose AI assistant. Baba is therefore combining AI with human care professionals. The company can use technology for repetitive work while relying on people for situations that require judgment or direct patient interaction.BabaBench aims to measure how AI systems perform on these longer workflows. The benchmark also raises a broader issue for healthcare AI. Successful automation requires more than completing a task. Systems must also respect privacy, authorisation, and other safeguards throughout the process.
Baba Builds Toward Wider Adoption
The $40 million Series A gives Baba capital to expand its clinical teams, continue AI research and develop additional health plan partnerships.FirstMark Capital led the financing, joined by CVS Health Ventures and Valtruis, with General Catalyst, Genius Ventures and Ground Up Ventures returning to the round. The investment comes as healthcare companies continue to explore how AI can reduce administrative burdens and support care delivery. For Baba, the focus is on people who may need ongoing assistance rather than a one-time answer to a healthcare question. The company’s strategy combines human expertise with AI systems designed to handle portions of complex workflows.
What Comes Next for Baba
Baba now has additional funding to expand its care operations and continue building its technology. The company will need to demonstrate that its approach can work reliably as the number of patients and health plan relationships increases. Its work on AI healthcare navigation also places greater importance on how AI agents handle sensitive information and multistep healthcare tasks.BabaBench offers one way to evaluate those capabilities, while its clinical teams provide the human support layer. The company is also looking to expand value-based arrangements with health plans. If those relationships grow, they could give Baba a larger channel to reach Medicare and Medicaid patients. The combination of funding, clinical teams, AI research and health plan partnerships gives Baba several avenues for expansion. The larger test will be whether the company can scale its model while maintaining the human oversight and safeguar¯ds required in healthcare. The original Health Tech World report reported Baba’s $40 million Series A and its plans to expand clinical care teams, AI research and health plan partnerships.
