Employer health care costs are expected to increase by the most in 15 years in 2026.
This simple statistic It has dizzying socioeconomic and political implications: At a time when artificial intelligence is becoming the driving force behind technological and economic growth, health care costs may never have been America’s most painful flashpoint. Still, the place of small businesses and their employees in this equation is tenuous at best.
Ty Wang, CEO and co-founder of Angle Health, said that while there has been a “proliferation of new ways of receiving care” such as telemedicine, digital pharmacies and chronic disease management programs, these benefits have primarily benefited employees at large tech companies or primarily white-collar companies.
“The vast majority of Americans still don’t have access to these services,” he said.
In 2019, Wang co-founded Angle Health, an AI-driven healthcare benefits startup, with Palantir alum Anirban Gangopadhyay. Now, Angle has raised $134 million in Series B funding, including equity and debt, led by Portage, wealth Learned exclusively. The company says it serves more than 2,600 small business employers in 44 states.
“We’ve been able to use AI very effectively in areas that humans shouldn’t have to manage manually,” Gangopadhyay said. “We quote thousands of groups every week. At any other company, the quotes you get are 12, 15, 20 page long PDFs. They parse those PDFs manually… We’ve completely automated and optimized the process, and our underwriters and salespeople are only doing what we need to do manually.”
Small businesses face particular difficulties when delivering healthcare, often operating with poor broker support, limited transparency and no bargaining power.
“The SME market is a large segment of the population that is often forgotten,” Wang said. “There’s absolutely no transparency. There’s very little predictability, and the incumbents are able to keep tabs on the data they can get.”
Wang and Gangopadhyay told wealth that Angle is committed to transparency, cost stability and detailed reporting in an effort to improve the healthcare experience and cost surprises. There is recognition that this is a systemic problem, albeit one that can be greatly improved (and, over time, slowly rebuilt) through technology.
“We don’t believe insurance companies can really solve the health care problem,” Gangopadhyay said. “We believe the future of healthcare is a completely redesigned ecosystem that uses AI-first, technology-first products and workflows to truly deliver the best care to members.”
See you tomorrow,
Ellie Garfunkel
X：@agarfinks
e-mail:alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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