In a healthcare system where cancer patients often save lives due to the administration of traditional Chinese tape, Risa Labs is stepping in using a powerful, native solution for AI to remove one of the most lasting bottlenecks in oncology: delays in advance authorization. Today, the Palo Alto-based startup announced the $3.5 million seed round led by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and was backed by Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, Z21 Ventures, Odd Bird VC and Ashish Gupta.
Risa Labs’ mission is urgent: using AI fundamentally simplifies and accelerates the manual workflow between cancer patients and timely treatment. According to data from the Astro survey, 92% of cancer patients face delays due to prior authorization, and one in three doctors (33%) said that the patients who had prior authorization caused them to give up radiation therapy, an average of 1 out of 10 patients left the treatment.
At the heart of RISA’s solution is Boss (Business Operating Systems as Services), a full-stack orchestration platform that reimagines how healthcare workflows work. Unlike typical AI assistants or robotic process automation (RPA) tools that can easily break as the system changes, the boss breaks down the agency workflow into microtasks and delegates it to an intelligent network of AI agents, including LLMS (large language model), digital twins, digital twins, and reinforcement learning models.
Think of Boss as an operating system, not for individual users, but for the entire organization. It runs on the software ecosystem of healthcare institutions, enabling a parallel digital workforce that complements human teams.
As Kshitij Jaggi, Co-founder and CEO of Risanoted:We have Windows, Linux, we have Mac – EAST OS helps humans extract more from machines. But now, we are overwhelmed by software. Software that could have done the job has become a job. Boss is an AI operating system in the post-film era, where work is no longer about learning tools, but just expressing intentions. ”
In real-world deployments, bosses have proven their value. At the leading U.S. cancer center, it reduced its previous authorization time from 30 minutes to less than five, processed more than $1 million in medication, reduced administrative costs by 66%, and released 80% of its staff time.
It’s not just about saving time, it’s about saving lives. As Dr. Jeffrey Vacirca,,,,, CEO of Cancer and Blood Expert in New Yorkfamous: “Every delay in treatment affects the outcome. Prior authorization continues to slow us down. RISA is building more than just smart technology. It removes obstacles, so our teams can move faster and focus on what matters most: caring for patients.”
Technical Heart: AI OS built for complexity
According to co-founder and CTO Kumar Shivang, Risa’s boss was built for “low permeability system design.” In practice, this means creating an environment where AI agents can run efficiently even in the face of high system complexity. Inspired by cognitive science principles such as Systems 2 thinking (which involves slow, intentional and logical decision-making), Boss aims to bring a “flow” state to artificial agents, enabling them to operate in highly regulated and multifaceted domains such as Healthcare.
By tightly integrating with recording systems such as Flatiron Health’s EMR, Boss goes beyond data analytics for real-time orchestration. This positioned Risa as more than just a tool provider, it became a platform for smart agencies, where smart agencies work dynamically with human teams.
Founder of Domain Depth
Risa Labs was founded by IIT Kanpur alumni and longtime collaborators Kshitij Jaggi and Kumar Shivang, who previously expanded Healthcare Startup Urban Health. Their first-hand experience with slow, error-prone medical workflows prompted them to rethink the entire system from scratch. Their early research on digital twins and operational modeling – led to the co-authored white paper “The Digital Twin Ecosystem in Clinical Operations of Oncology”, laying the foundation for what will become a boss.
Now, their work is resonating with top investors and clinical leaders. Binny Bansalthis Major Investorsas part of a larger trend, frame it: “As AI agents tear down the $4.6 trillion service industry, Risa’s boss led oncology and expanded.”
What’s next
With the help of new funding, RISA aims to deploy owners of 100 other cancer centers in the next two years. But the company’s ambitions cannot be stopped with prior authorization. Its long-term vision is to become an AI transformation partner in the oncology ecosystem (from operational coordination to clinical decision support) and to establish a unified orchestration layer for AI in healthcare.
As the healthcare industry continues to struggle with rising costs and labor shortages, Risa Labs is not only building AI tools, but also redesigning how institutions work. By having AI agents handle the grinding of operations, Risa gives time and focuses on those who need it: doctors, nurses and staff on the frontlines of cancer care.
