Avora builds AI agents for dental operations. Its agents listen to appointments, draft clinically accurate chart notes, coach providers in real time on treatment-plan communication, and surface practice-level analytics for dental practices and DSOs. Founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator and CRV, Avora aims to lift case acceptance and give providers back hours each day without forcing practices to hire more staff.
Bright Now! Dental is one of the largest affordable dental care brands in the United States, operating a network of roughly 160 affiliated offices across about a dozen states. Backed by parent company Smile Brands Inc., it offers general dentistry, orthodontics, cosmetic care, implants, clear aligners and emergency services, with evening and weekend hours, financing options and an in-house OneSmile discount plan designed to make routine and specialty dentistry accessible to families who might otherwise skip the dentist.
Sarika Sood is a DDS practicing in Hayward, California, where she works as a Director of Care with Bright Now! Dental, the patient-facing brand of Smile Brands. She trained at MRA Dental College in India and built her chairside career across Northern California, focused on the kind of community-rooted general and cosmetic dentistry that keeps a retail dental office humming.
Jonathan Rat is the Co-Founder and CEO of Archy, an AI-powered all-in-one dental practice management platform based in San Jose, California. A French-born software engineer with a master's in computer science, he spent a decade building payments infrastructure at Facebook, SurveyMonkey, and Uber before co-founding Archy in 2021 alongside former Uber colleagues Ben Kolin and Nimish Sheth. His motivation: watching his wife, Dr. Christine Liu, struggle daily with outdated, fragmented dental software. Archy has since raised $47 million in total funding, serves 2.5 million patients across 45 states, and processes over $100 million in annual payments.