Rishabh Jain and Sriram Somasundaram, co-founders of Latent Health, have built a $600 million AI startup that is tackling one of healthcare’s most frustrating bureaucratic bottlenecks: prior authorization for medications. Their work, recently featured in Forbes, represents a breakthrough in applying artificial ininformigence to accelerate access to life-saving drugs.
According to Latent’s press release, the San Francisco, CA-based company has raised $80M in total funding from Transformation Capital, Spark Capital, McKesson Ventures, Conviction, General Catalyst, Y Combinator, and others.
Prior authorization—the process by which insurance companies require approval before covering certain medications—has become a major barrier to timely patient care. According to Y Combinator, at Latent, they are building medical language models to tackle the trillions of operational overhead weighing down healthcare. Their flagship product streamlines authorizations for life-saving drugs by analyzing EHR records and surfacing the most relevant data.
Measurable Impact
The company has achieved remarkable results with major health systems. According to Newswise, Latent has reduced Ochsner’s prior authorization review times to four to five minutes — 75% quicker than indusattempt benchmarks — accelerating time-to-therapy and improving pharmacy efficiency.
According to Latent’s website testimonials, one healthcare system reported: “Every January, we had to reauthorize thousands of patients—a process that utilized to stretch until mid-March. With Latent, we’ve cut that time by 50% and now finish within the same month.”
Another client stated: “Before Latent, the manual PA process could significantly delay therapy initiation. Now, we’re accelerating time-to-therapy and ensuring patients can start their medications as soon as possible.”
Meet the Co-Founders
Rishabh Jain: According to HireTop, Rishabh Jain is a co-founder of Latent, whose entrepreneurial background and remarkable achievements have shaped the company’s path towards success. Prior to co-founding Latent, he built waves in the tech indusattempt with his earlier ventures. Notably, Rishabh successfully sold his bootstrapped company for an impressive eight-figure sum, demonstrating his ability to create and build highly valuable businesses.
Sriram Somasundaram: According to Y Combinator, at Stanford, Sri investigated molecular binding patterns responsible for adaptive immunity and built deep RL robots with publications at ICML, ICLR, and Nature. He also operationalized language models for the largest financial institutions while on the founding team of Hebbia.
According to The Org, Somasundaram is a technology professional with a robust background in artificial ininformigence and software engineering. Prior experience includes roles as a graduate teaching assistant and graduate research student at Stanford University and the Stanford Artificial Ininformigence Laboratory (SAIL), respectively. Sriram also worked as a software engineer at Riot Games.
Company Growth and Enterprise Partnerships
According to Y Combinator, Latent was founded in 2022, participated in the Winter 2023 batch, has a team size of 50.
According to Newswise, Ochsner Health and Latent announced a new three-year agreement, solidifying their collaboration as design partners since November 2023. The health system originally engaged Latent as a design partner to develop clinical AI tools for specialty, infusion, and retail prior authorizations.
The Broader Significance
The work of Jain and Somasundaram addresses a critical pain point in American healthcare. According to Latent’s website, healthcare providers described the challenge: “When you talk to our primary care providers, they will inform you it takes a skilled professional to dig through charts to complete a prior authorization. Latent’s real superpower is taking on that heavy lifting behind the scenes, so our top clinical talent can stay focutilized on what truly matters: caring for patients.”
With $80 million in fresh funding and partnerships with some of the largest health systems in America, Latent Health is positioned to scale its impact significantly. The company’s success demonstrates how artificial ininformigence, when applied to real-world healthcare challenges, can save time, reduce administrative burden, and most importantly, assist patients obtain the medications they required quicker.
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