SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Universe, the enterprise AI platform that automates complex healthcare workflows, today announced $6 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to $9.5 million to date. The round follows a 2023 pre-seed backed by Susa Ventures, Twelve Below, and Oncology Ventures. The new capital will accelerate adoption across leading academic medical centers (AMCs), health systems, and life sciences organizations as Health Universe establishes itself as the definitive AI infrastructure layer for healthcare, oncology, and clinical research.
Healthcare organizations are under mounting pressure as clinician burnout rises, staff are overwhelmed by administrative burdens, and clinical trial timelines routinely stretch nearly eight months before a single patient is enrolled. While AI tools have demonstrated promise across healthcare, most systems remain black boxes, making them difficult to audit and to safely deploy in high-stakes clinical environments. Health Universe addresses this gap by providing a secure, compliant workspace to deploy inspectable, auditable agents designed for regulated healthcare settings. In less than a year since launching Navigator, the platform has processed over 170M clinical documents.
Health Universe serves as an AI workflow engine for healthcare organizations, enabling them to build, deploy, and govern autonomous and human-in-the-loop agents within a secure, ONC-certified, HIPAA-compliant environment. Its platform includes:
- Navigator: A secure organizational workspace for deploying, managing, and monitoring agents that run over a patient record. Users can retrieve patient records from TEFCA, FHIR, or direct upload and run off-the-shelf agents, custom agents, or vendor contributed agents.
- Explorer: A population-level workspace to build cohorts and execute agents.
- Observer: Monitors agents for cost, hallucination and high-risk scenario flagging.
- Oncology Agents: Transforms fragmented medical records into structured, source-linked oncology summaries, including diagnosis, staging, biomarkers, treatment history, and disease progression, reducing hours of chart review to minutes. Deployed at several leading oncology practices and New York Cancer and Blood Specialists.
- Clinical Trials Agents: A multi-agent system that converts brief study synopses into comprehensive 75-page clinical trial protocols, with automated ClinicalTrials.gov submissions and Institutional Review Board workflow integration. Built in conjunction with Duke Clinical Research Institute.
"Healthcare doesn't need another chatbot," said Dan Caron, Founder and CEO of Health Universe. "It needs AI systems that are traceable, compliant, and built for real clinical workflows. Our infrastructure allows organizations to deploy agents that solve high-priority use cases quickly, usually in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years. And we provide the security, inspectability, and auditability that academic medical centers and healthcare stakeholders require. This new funding allows us to scale these capabilities and bring trusted AI agents and models to more institutions and health systems across the country."
The company is also building an Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Marketplace, positioning Health Universe as the connective layer that enables healthcare AI agents to securely exchange documents and coordinate work across organizations.
Early results demonstrate a significant impact. At Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), Health Universe's Project Loom initiative has accelerated clinical trial setup by 30-40x, compressing timelines from six to nine months down to approximately seven and a half days, while delivering 93% time savings across key workflow tasks and 10x faster document processing.
Beyond product performance, Health Universe has established a regulatory and compliance moat that differentiates it from generic AI platforms. The company is ONC B.11 certified, a Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) network participant, SOC 2 Type II compliant, and fully HIPAA-aligned—certifications and infrastructure that competitors often require 12–18 months and significant capital to achieve. In competitive evaluations, including at Duke, Health Universe has won against larger technology incumbents by demonstrating flexibility, ease of use, and enterprise governance.
"AI is already proving transformative in healthcare, but trust, security, and compliance are non-negotiable," said Annie Case, from Kleiner Perkins. "Health Universe has built the rare combination of technical sophistication and regulatory readiness required for academic medicine. We believe they are defining the agentic layer for healthcare."
The new funding will support expansion across AMCs, deepen integrations with oncology and clinical research teams, and strengthen Health Universe's position as the integration platform for organizations seeking to incorporate AI into their workflows.
Clinicians and scientists can begin using the platform immediately at https://healthuniverse.com.
About Health Universe
Health Universe is the AI infrastructure enabling healthcare organizations to safely integrate and govern autonomous and human-in-the-loop agents in regulated clinical environments. Designed for academic medical centers, health systems, and life sciences organizations, the company's HIPAA-compliant platform automates complex workflows across oncology, clinical research, and healthcare operations. By incorporating inspectable, traceable, auditable agents, Health Universe reduces hours of manual administrative work to minutes. Internal AI builders can also use Health Universe to deploy applications and agents in a secure, compliant environment that quickly allows ideas to reach production. Headquartered in San Francisco, Health Universe is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Susa Ventures, Twelve Below, and Oncology Ventures. For more information, visit www.healthuniverse.com.
