
What You Should Know:
– Penguin Ai, a healthcare artificial intelligence company that solves administrative burdens, announced today that it has secured $29.7 million in venture funding, including a $25M Series A led by Greycroft.
– Other participants in the financing include UPMC Enterprises, SemperVirens, Snowflake Ventures, Watershed Ventures and Horizon Mutual Holdings, Inc, the parent of New Jersey’s largest and oldest health insurer.
Purpose-Built AI Platform for Payers and Providers
Penguin Ai, a healthcare AI company founded in 2024, is transforming back-office operations for payers and providers with its generative AI-driven platform. The company’s flagship solution integrates task-specific Small Language Models (SLMs), proprietary healthcare-trained Language Models (LMs), and ready-to-deploy Digital Workers and Agents to streamline administrative workflows at scale.
The full-service platform enables organizations to:
Prepare and structure data for AI applicationsAccess pre-built healthcare LLMs via APIsDeploy out-of-the-box solutions for workflows such as prior authorizations, medical coding, claims adjudication, appeals management, risk adjustment, chart summarization, and payment integrityBy automating high-volume, repetitive processes, Penguin Ai reduces operational costs, improves accuracy, and frees clinical and administrative teams to focus on patient care.
Strong Investor Backing and Industry Expertise
The new funding round included continued support from ManchesterStory, Overwater Ventures, California Health Care Foundation, and Matt Kozlov (Multiball Capital). Additional backers include Canvas Prime, Plug and Play, and industry veterans such as John Santelli (former CIO, UnitedHealthcare) and Eric Larsen (formerly of the Advisory Board).
Funds will be used to accelerate hiring, advance product development, and expand deployments with payers and providers.
“The healthcare industry spends billions annually on administrative inefficiencies,” said Fawad Butt, Founder and CEO of Penguin Ai, and former Chief Data Officer at UnitedHealthcare, Kaiser Permanente, and Optum. “By leveraging generative AI, we can dramatically reduce costs, improve accuracy, and return resources to the front lines of patient care.”
Since its launch, Penguin Ai has secured partnerships with leading health plans, providers, and technology organizations. Its leadership team brings over 100 years of combined experience from organizations such as Capital Blue Cross, UnitedHealthcare, Optum, Kaiser Permanente, Amazon, McKesson, Elevance, and U.S. federal health agencies—positioning the company as a trusted partner in healthcare AI transformation.