Toothy AI builds HIPAA-compliant AI agents that run the insurance side of a dental practice - verifying patient coverage, filing and correcting claims, chasing denials, and posting payments. Using voice AI to make payer phone calls and portal automation to check eligibility, Toothy aims to take the roughly 160 hours a month that clinics spend on insurance busywork off staff plates. A Y Combinator Winter 2025 company founded in 2024 by Johnny Chen and Matthew Kerrigan, it sells a subscription service to dental clinics looking to collect more, faster, with smaller back-office teams.
Retrace is a San Francisco AI company rebuilding the plumbing of dental insurance. Founded in 2016 by dentist-engineer Dr. Ali Sadat, it operates what it calls the first natively-built AI healthcare clearinghouse - a network that reads X-rays and clinical records, compares proposed procedures against millions of adjudicated cases, and lets payers, providers and patients see coverage, cost and payout in real time so claims settle in seconds instead of weeks. Backed by Intel Capital and SoftBank, Retrace has raised roughly $18 million to automate the paperwork that sits between a dentist's chair and an insurer's check.