RISA Labs, a Palo Alto company that sells an AI operating system for cancer care, raised an $11.1m Series A, announced on 13 January 2026. Cencora Ventures and Optum Ventures co-led the round. Oncology Ventures, Z21 Ventures and John Simon, a co-founder of General Catalyst who invested through his Ventureforgood entity, also took part, according to the company's release on BioSpace.
No valuation was disclosed. The release did not give a founding year, the company's headcount or its total funding.
“BOSS Console is a low-entropy thinking information machine.”Kumar Shivang, Co-Founder and CTO, RISA Labs
What RISA Labs does
RISA's software uses AI agents that connect to medical records and payer systems to handle the administrative steps around cancer treatment: patient access, benefits verification and prior authorisation. The product is run through a control panel called BOSS Console.
Kshitij Jaggi is co-founder and chief executive and Kumar Shivang is co-founder and chief technology officer. Shivang described BOSS Console as "a low-entropy thinking information machine."
RISA said it is already live at some of the largest oncology practices in the United States, though it did not name them. Partner institutions expanded from one initial workflow to a second and third within nine months, the release said.
Coverager reported that the platform adjusts in real time as payer rules and systems change. The company reports reduced administrative workload, lower denial rates and significantly shorter authorisation timelines, and said some early customers moved into multiple workflows within months of deployment.
Results at one partner
The company cited results from a single partner site. They were about 80% of administrative staff time freed, denials reduced by up to 40%, a first-pass approval rate of 97.8% and more than 20 full-time-equivalent staff redeployed. The figures are the company's own and were not independently verified in the sources reviewed.
The 80% and 97.8% figures describe one customer, not RISA's customers as a whole. The release did not name the site, so readers cannot check the results against the practice itself.
What the money is for
RISA said it will use the funding to speed deployment to cancer clinics, health systems, specialty pharmacies and infusion networks across the US. Pulse 2.0 added that the company plans to deepen its oncology focus, partner with others in the ecosystem and expand into specialty pharmacy operations.
The release described the aim as getting patients onto the right therapy faster and removing administrative friction from each step of the journey.
Jaggi said in the release: "In our vision for oncology, there are two sides to every patient's journey." The full quote goes on to describe getting patients onto the right therapy faster and deepening understanding of the disease through data. Dinger of Cencora said the investment reflects the need to streamline operations and enable efficient access to therapy as treatments for oncology patients grow in number and complexity.
Who invested
The two leads are corporate venture arms from healthcare companies. Cencora is a pharmaceutical distributor and Optum is the health services business of UnitedHealth Group; the release included a comment from Jason Dinger, a Cencora senior vice president for strategic execution, about the growing number and complexity of oncology treatments.
Oncology Ventures and Z21 Ventures are the other named institutions. The sources reviewed do not report earlier rounds.