Seattle-based BirchAI, a startup that builds software to streamline customer support for healthcare companies, announced Tuesday that it is being acquired by Sagility, a Denver-based health-tech company.
BirchAI was spun out of Seattle’s AI2 Incubator in 2021 and raised $3.1 million in seed funding in January 2022.
The company was launched in June 2020 by CEO Kevin Terrell, CTO Yinhan Liu and Austin-based COO Sumant Kawale. The trio had previously worked at SparkCognition, an AI-focused startup where Terrell led business development for healthcare, Liu was a research scientist, and Kawale was VP of customer success and partnerships.
Terrell called it an “exciting day” for the BirchAI team in a post on LinkedIn.
“This will allow us to accelerate the build-out of our healthcare-specific generative AI solutions for contact centers, and we can’t wait to get rolling!” Terrell wrote. He thanked investors, including Radical Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Washington Research Foundation and AI Grant.
BirchAI’s software use natural language processing to summarize and analyze the contents of phone conversations between customers and representatives. It builds a summary document after listening to a call, which an employee can edit if needed. Beyond healthcare, BirchAI’s tech also supports customers in insurance, banking and other markets.
“It’s an employee satisfaction opportunity, because they get rid of the work that they don’t want to do,” Terrell told GeekWire in 2022. “It allows the employees to focus on the conversation more as well. So, ultimately, patient satisfaction.”
Sagility said the acquisition will allow it to broaden its analytics and automation-backed healthcare engagement services that it provides to large national payers, Blues plans, regional payers, health systems, medical devices and other healthcare providers.
Sagility has more than 34,000 employees across five countries.
Terms of the deal were not released.
