We are thrilled to announce that we co-led a $5M seed investment round in Understood Care, the first AI-native patient advocacy platform, alongside Rethink Education, with participation from Y Combinator, 1984 Ventures and other strategic investment firms. The investment will fuel Understood Care’s mission to address one of the most urgent, costly challenges US patients face: navigating healthcare.
We've all been there: waiting on hold with an insurance company, being transferred between representatives and asked to verify your member ID for the fifth time. For most of us, navigating the healthcare system is frustrating. For the 69 million Americans on Medicare, navigating healthcare can feel impossible and lonely.
That is what led us to get excited about and invest in Understood Care.
The Problem
The U.S. healthcare system is deeply fragmented and difficult for patients, particularly seniors, disabled individuals, and those with chronic conditions, to navigate. 72% of insured adults lack confidence navigating healthcare on their own, with the burden falling hardest on Medicare populations. Patients face challenges such as scheduling appointments, deciphering complex forms and surprise bills, coordinating between providers, insurance, and caregivers, and accessing medical transportation. These barriers ultimately lead to lower quality of life for patients, and higher costs for everyone.
The Solution
Understood Care’s advocates serve as personal healthcare guides for Medicare patients. It matches each patient with a 1:1 healthcare advocate, who handles both healthcare and social needs, including care coordination, benefits access, and emotional support.
By helping patients, Understood Care helps the entire healthcare system. As payers and providers seek to improve patient success while controlling costs, its scalable advocacy infrastructure delivers both. Understood Care reduces costs while helping patients get better care by ensuring they get to appointments, access appropriate benefits, and resolve barriers like transportation, housing, and medication affordability.
What Understood Care Does
Patients start by filling out an intake form and conducting an initial telehealth call with a provider. From there, Understood matches patients with one of their expert patient advocates: seasoned professionals with backgrounds in nursing, healthcare administration, and social work.
Patients communicate with their advocate via phone or video. Advocates listen to their patients’ challenges and work to get them the care they deserve: handling calls, appointments, signing up for benefits, coordinating access to local resources, handling paperwork, provider coordination, translating confusing information, aiding with plan selection, and even lowering medical bills.
Behind the scenes is Ava, Understood Care’s AI co-pilot for advocates. Ava handles the administrative work behind the scenes, enabling one advocate to do the work of ten, learning from every interaction to make the platform smarter over time. By dramatically lowering the cost of delivering quality care at scale, Ava is making it possible for Understood Care advocates to bring high-quality services to the millions of underserved Americans who need it most.
Understood Care is transforming advocacy from a luxury into a universal healthcare service.
The Team
We are thrilled to back CEO Sam Wu and CTO Kevin Bailey: a team with deep healthcare and technology expertise and hustle, tackling a massive, underserved market with a scalable solution that genuinely improves people’s lives.
Sam began her career at Carlyle and Evercore, building a rigorous understanding of payers, providers and Medicare economics. She then spent years operating inside the machinery of U.S. healthcare at Finni, Cedar, and SiteRx, and as a co-founder of Ply Health. She's seen firsthand how administrative friction blocks patients from the care they deserve. Kevin is a top-tier AI engineer who cut his teeth on one of the hardest real-world ML problems of the last decade: autonomous mobility and delivery at Uber, and brings that caliber of technical ambition to Ava, the AI co-pilot powering Understood Care's advocates. Together, they pair analytical discipline and operator experience with the engineering chops to turn patient advocacy into scalable infrastructure.
Our Investment and What’s Next
Understood Care sits at the intersection of two of our core investment categories: the Future of Work and Healthcare, by enabling patient advocates to scale their reach to millions of underserved Americans.
It's rare to find an investment opportunity that combines exceptional talent, enormous commercial potential, and meaningful social impact. Understood Care has demonstrated just that since launching in March 2025, expanding its platform across all 50 states in just eight months and serving over 5,000 patients and counting. With a business model that aligns financial incentives and social impact, Understood Care is rapidly transforming advocacy from a luxury into a universal healthcare service.
We're proud to partner with Sam, Kevin, and the entire Understood Care team as they work to a more effective and equitable health system. To learn more about what Understood Care offers or explore open positions, visit www.understoodcare.com.