Rebuilding the administrative backbone of health insurance - one white-labeled system for claims, payments, and members.
The Yuzu mark - a single orange dot amid a field of empty squares. A quiet signal in an industry built on 30-year-old software.
Most attempts to fix American health insurance start with the plan a patient sees. Yuzu Health started somewhere less visible: the software running underneath it.
Founded in New York in 2022, Yuzu Health rebuilt the administrative backbone of health insurance into a unified, white-labeled system of record. It operates as a vertically integrated third-party administrator - a TPA - which means it provides the behind-the-scenes engine that powers claims processing, payments, and member administration for health plans.
The pitch is straightforward. Legacy TPAs, one Yuzu customer put it, are “built on 20-30+ year-old systems” that “simply can’t deliver” modern plan designs. Yuzu’s wager is that if you replace that brittle plumbing with configurable software, insurers and employers can launch better, cheaper plans without a heavy manual services burden.
Co-founder and CEO Max Kauderer describes the platform as a “nervous system” for health insurance - the central layer that carries signals between plan design, claims, and members. It is not the brand a member sees. It is the thing that makes the whole apparatus respond.
The approach has drawn real capital and real volume. In April 2026, Yuzu raised a $35 million Series A led by General Catalyst and Chemistry, bringing total funding to roughly $40 million. By then it had already processed more than $1 billion in claims payment volume across all 50 states.
The administrative engine of health insurance - the systems that adjudicate claims, move payments, and track members - largely runs on software written decades ago. That brittleness makes non-traditional plan designs expensive or impossible to run, and buries insurers and brokers in manual services work. Small employers, in particular, get stuck with rigid, costly coverage.
Yuzu replaces the legacy back office with a single, modern, configurable platform. Customers design plans - including direct provider contracts, cash-pay options, and dynamic copays - in software, then run them end to end on Yuzu’s claims engine, payment rails, and member portals. Plans that took months and heavy services can launch in a fraction of the time.
Design and configure custom plans - direct contracts, cash-pay, dynamic copays - with auto-generated plan materials like SPDs and SBCs.
An in-house claims processing and adjudication engine that replaces brittle legacy TPA systems, built for automation.
Integrated payments and an auto-ledger system handling claims payment, reference-based pricing, and reconciliation.
Branded, human-centered member portals with cost transparency, provider recommendations, and support tools.
Real-time performance monitoring and reporting for plan sponsors, brokers, and employers.
Pre-built integrations with partners like PBMs and stop-loss vendors for unified, end-to-end operation.
Yuzu works with health insurers, brokers, and self-funded employers across every US state. The platform supports thousands of employers and has moved more than $1 billion through its claims payment rails to date.
One customer, Arlo CEO Jan-Felix Schneider, said Yuzu “gave us a highly automated, scalable system that allowed us to operate our plan without operational friction” - the recurring theme across its base.
Cumulative capital raised and total claims payment volume. Figures per company and press announcements.
Traditional TPAs sell services layered on top of aging software; changing a plan often means a project. Yuzu inverts that. It treats plan design as configuration - versioned, testable, and launchable - and owns the full vertical stack rather than stitching together outside vendors.
That vertical integration is the differentiator. Because Yuzu runs its own claims engine and payment rails, it can support benefit structures - dynamic copays, direct contracts, cash-pay - that were previously impractical to administer. The services burden shrinks; the design space grows.
In the market, Yuzu sits at the infrastructure layer of insurtech: not a consumer-facing insurer, but the engine other plans run on. Its competitors are legacy administrators and health-plan admin incumbents whose customers, in Yuzu’s telling, are apologizing for their own technology.
The bet from investors is that this layer compounds. General Catalyst’s Alex Tran joined the board, and Anthropic’s Anthology Fund backed the round - a nod to Yuzu’s plan to automate claims adjudication, reconciliation, and reporting with AI.
None of Yuzu’s founders came from traditional health insurance. They started out trying to help patients fight medical debt, then pivoted to fix the problem from the insurance side.
Former healthcare-focused consultant at Bain & Company. Sets Yuzu’s strategy and describes the platform as insurance’s “nervous system.”
Early engineer at DoNotPay, the legal-automation service. Brings automation and systems depth to the claims engine.
Former product engineer at Lithic, the fintech card-issuing platform. Anchors Yuzu’s payments and product work.
Max Kauderer, Russell Pekala, and Ryan Lee start the company, initially aiming to help patients fight medical debt.
The team shifts to rebuilding health-plan administration and raises a $5M seed round led by Lachy Groom.
Yuzu integrates claims, payments, and member administration for insurers, brokers, and employers across the country.
Yuzu raises its Series A led by General Catalyst and Chemistry, having processed over $1 billion in claims across all 50 states.
Yuzu is a vertically integrated third-party administrator (TPA). It provides the behind-the-scenes engine for health insurance - claims processing, payments, and member administration - in a single, white-labeled system that lets customers launch configurable plan designs.
It was founded in 2022 by Max Kauderer (CEO), Russell Pekala, and Ryan Lee, who came from Bain, DoNotPay, and Lithic respectively.
About $40 million total, including a $35 million Series A in April 2026 led by General Catalyst and Chemistry, following a $5 million seed round.
Health insurers, brokers, and self-funded employers across all 50 US states. The platform supports thousands of employers and has processed over $1 billion in claims payment volume.
Unlike legacy TPAs running on decades-old systems, Yuzu offers a modern, configurable, software-first platform enabling plan designs like direct contracts, cash-pay, and dynamic copays without a heavy manual services burden.