The Healthtech Dispatch
New York, N.Y.
Company Profile
Nirvana The company teaching an AI to read the fine print of American health insurance - so a claim gets paid before it's ever denied.
Almost every denied medical claim begins with a small, invisible mistake. A member ID typed one digit off. A plan that quietly reset in January. A carve-out benefit no one thought to check. By the time the payment doesn't arrive, the visit is long over and a biller is on hold with an insurer trying to reconstruct what went wrong. Nirvana, a New York health tech company founded in 2019, was built to catch that mistake at the front door instead of the back office.
The company sells insurance eligibility and benefits verification - the unglamorous but essential step of confirming, before a patient is seen, exactly what their plan covers and what it will cost. Traditionally that check runs on a 1990s-era electronic transaction that returns little more than a yes-or-no coverage flag. Nirvana wraps an AI model around that plumbing, reading plans from hundreds of payers and returning real-time, specialty-specific detail: outpatient limits, plan resets, carve-outs, and an accurate patient cost estimate.
The result, the company says, is a verification model that after millions of checks is now more accurate than human billers - and a platform that has saved providers more than 30,000 hours of manual work while cutting claim denials by roughly 30 percent.
Manual benefit checks are slow, error-prone and expensive. Bad eligibility data quietly produces denied claims and surprise bills - the tax that both patients and practices pay for opacity.
Nirvana's supervised-learning model interprets complex plans in real time, corrects data-entry errors, and surfaces specialty-specific benefits instead of a blunt covered / not-covered flag.
Access it through the OneVerify web and mobile app, a direct Coverage API, or embedded inside an existing EHR - backed by multiple clearinghouse relationships for ~99% uptime.
Healthcare providers and digital health platforms, with deep roots in mental and behavioral health. Named customers include SonderMind, Geode Health, Modern Health, Hopscotch and Rivia Mind - the kind of high-volume, insurance-heavy operations where a bad eligibility check is felt immediately.
Figures reported by Nirvana and customer case studies. Individual results vary by specialty and payer mix.
End-to-end AI eligibility management in a web and mobile app that automates verification for provider teams.
Real-time, typo-proof benefits data built for digital health and EHR/EMR partners to embed directly into their workflows.
Finds active coverage even when the member ID is wrong or the insurance card is missing entirely.
Retrieves full eligibility from just a name, date of birth and zip code - correcting for data-entry errors.
Real-time out-of-pocket clarity so practices can quote patients accurately before a visit.
Continuous coverage tracking that flags plan resets and changes before they turn into denials.
Legacy clearinghouses answer one question - is this person covered? Nirvana answers the ones that actually determine whether a claim gets paid: what's covered for this specialty, what has reset, what the patient owes, and whether the input data was even correct. That depth, plus delivery through API, EHR and app, is the wedge against incumbents like Availity, Change Healthcare, Waystar and pVerify, and newer API-first entrants such as Stedi and Sohar Health.
Nirvana sits at the front of the revenue cycle - the eligibility and benefits step that everything downstream depends on. By starting in behavioral and mental health, where insurance complexity is high and legacy tools were weak, it built a data flywheel that now extends to primary care, physical therapy and outpatient providers. It's B2B infrastructure: least glamorous layer, most defensible position.
The trio started Nirvana after watching patients and providers absorb the financial cost of insurance opacity. What began as a tool to help therapists manage patient workloads grew into eligibility infrastructure for a nationwide provider base.
“This antiquated standard is no longer compatible with today's digital healthcare environment.”
Urvish Parikh, Co-Founder & CTO| Round | Amount | Date | Lead / Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | $4.2M | Jun 2021 | Arc Ventures, Eniac Ventures |
| Seed | $7.5M | Nov 2021 | Inspired Capital |
| Series A | $24.2M | Sep 2024 | Northzone (lead), Inspired Capital, Eniac Ventures, Surface Ventures |
Total funding to date: approximately $39.4M. Figures per public filings and trade-press reporting.
Akshay Venkitasubramanian, Urvish Parikh and Kelvin Chan start the company in New York to attack opaque insurance verification.
Raises $4.2M then $7.5M to help therapists and behavioral health providers manage insurance and patient workloads.
Expands its insurance intelligence platform on the back of more than $11M in seed capital.
Ships API-first eligibility products for digital health and EHR partners, including data recovery from minimal patient info.
Northzone leads a $24.2M round; Nirvana launches OneVerify, adds Cardless Verification and expands to Austin, Texas.
It automates health insurance eligibility and benefits verification. Its AI reads complex plans from hundreds of payers and returns real-time, specialty-specific benefit and cost details to healthcare providers.
Healthcare providers and digital health platforms - especially in mental and behavioral health. Customers include SonderMind, Geode Health, Modern Health, Hopscotch and Rivia Mind, with 100,000+ providers reported.
Instead of a basic covered / not-covered flag from the legacy 270/271 transaction, Nirvana interprets specialty-specific benefits, corrects data-entry errors, and can find coverage even without a member ID or card.
Roughly $39.4M total, including a $24.2M Series A in September 2024 led by Northzone with Inspired Capital, Eniac Ventures and Surface Ventures participating.
Three ways: the OneVerify web and mobile app, a direct Coverage API integration, or embedded inside an existing EHR/EMR system.
Profile compiled from public sources including meetnirvana.com, BusinessWire, Crunchbase and trade-press reporting. Figures are company-reported and approximate. Kelvin Chan is listed as a co-founder; executive titles reflect the most recent public sources.