Avante

Avante is a Seattle-based company that builds what it calls an AI-native benefits intelligence platform for employee benefits programs. The platform is organized around two purpose-built agents that share a common data foundation: Carly, which provides personalized guidance to employees, and Ava, which provides strategic and analytical intelligence to HR and benefits teams. Carly handles use cases such as new-hire benefits shopping and onboarding, life events (marriage, dependents, leave of absence, disability), open enrollment guidance and plan comparisons, 401(k)/FSA/HSA and contribution questions, COBRA eligibility and coverage transitions, and fertility benefits. Ava covers plan design and cost-trend analysis, vendor performance evaluation, open enrollment campaign intelligence, benefits harmonization in mergers and acquisitions, and year-over-year benchmarking and program effectiveness measurement. Conversations handled by Carly feed Ava with signals on sentiment, confusion patterns and trends, while Ava's findings return to Carly as nudges and personalized recommendations.

The platform ingests plan documents and integrates with HRIS systems, medical and vision carriers, TPAs and PBMs, retirement and financial providers, and point solutions, consolidating claims and eligibility data, point solution data, plan documents and vendor contracts into a repository the company calls the Vault. Agents are surfaced in the tools employees and HR already use, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, email/benefits inbox, ServiceNow, benefits portals and HR systems, a web app, LLM tools and an API. Avante states its document parsing technology is patent-pending, that 100% of responses are evaluated in real time with a stated zero-hallucination tolerance, and that flagged responses receive human review. It cites SOC 2 (Type II), HIPAA and GDPR compliance, enterprise SSO, encryption at rest and in transit, annual penetration testing, and a policy that customer data does not train its models or get retained by LLM providers.

Avante frames the market problem as healthcare costs rising 8–10% annually, employers offering two to three times more benefits point solutions than a decade ago, and 86% of employees remaining confused about their benefits, which drives underutilization and HR ticket volume while benefits teams lack visibility into program performance.

Founding story

Avante was founded by Rohan D'Souza (co-founder and CEO, previously Chief Product and Technology Officer at Olive AI and founding product lead at KenSci), Dr. Carly Eckert, MD, PhD (co-founder, physician, epidemiologist and clinical informaticist, previously in leadership roles at Olive AI and KenSci), and Kabir Shahani (executive chairman and co-founder, founder and former CEO of Amperity and co-founder of Appature, which sold to IMS Health in 2013). A Washington Secretary of State registration filing dated September 29, 2023 lists the formal name Avante Health Inc. and describes the business as an "employee intelligence platform." D'Souza said development began in the fall of 2023 following market analysis and months of conversations with prospective enterprise customers.

Business model

Avante sells an enterprise software platform to employers, positioned as a vendor-neutral layer over existing carriers, TPAs and point solutions. It also works with brokers and consultants, who deploy or resell benefits AI capabilities to their own clients, as illustrated by arrangements with OneDigital and Segal Benz.

Traction

Avante began R&D in late 2023 and launched publicly in April 2025. Named deployments include News Corp, Real Chemistry, BridgeBio, OneDigital, Navan, SurveyMonkey, Personify Health, Datavant, Zscaler and Samsung Semiconductor. Published customer results include OneDigital (4,275 inquiries resolved instantly; 1,690 emails drafted by AI), Real Chemistry (1,700+ questions answered instantly; 1,400+ hours reclaimed) and SurveyMonkey (20% increase in utilization; 369 hours saved during open enrollment). Aggregate figures cited by the company include 93% employee satisfaction, 60% employee adoption, 97% of benefits inquiries resolved, 3x lower HR ticket volume and 40% reduction in routine benefits workload.

Latest developments

On January 14, 2026 Avante announced GDPR compliance, which it says allows US-based employers to extend AI-powered benefits guidance to UK and European employees. In November 2025, CEO Rohan D'Souza appeared on a Seattle AI Week fundraising panel with Fuse founding general partner Kellan Carter covered by GeekWire. A published case study describes Samsung Semiconductor consolidating claims, eligibility, point solution data, plan documents and vendor contracts into Avante's Vault ahead of a renewal in which multiple point solution contracts expired simultaneously.