RISA Labs Raises $3.5M to Accelerate Cancer Treatment with AI Operating System

In a healthcare system where cancer patients often wait days—or even weeks—for life-saving treatments due to administrative red tape, RISA Labs is stepping in with a powerful, AI-native solution designed to eliminate one of the most persistent bottlenecks in oncology: prior authorization delays. Today, the Palo Alto-based startup announced a $3.5 million seed round led […] The post RISA Labs Raises $3.5M to Accelerate Cancer Treatment with AI Operating System appeared first on Unite.AI.

Apr 17, 2025 - 17:12

RISA Labs Raises $3.5M to Accelerate Cancer Treatment with AI Operating System

In a healthcare system where cancer patients often wait days—or even weeks—for life-saving treatments due to administrative red tape, RISA Labs is stepping in with a powerful, AI-native solution designed to eliminate one of the most persistent bottlenecks in oncology: prior authorization delays. Today, the Palo Alto-based startup announced a $3.5 million seed round led by Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, with support from Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, ODD BIRD VC, and Ashish Gupta.

RISA Labs’ mission is urgent: use AI to radically simplify and accelerate the manual workflows that stand between cancer patients and timely treatment. According to data from ASTRO surveys, 92% of cancer patients face delays due to prior authorization, and one-third of the doctors (33%) said prior authorization has led to their patients abandoning radiation treatment, with an average of 1 in 10 patients leaving treatment.

At the core of RISA’s solution is BOSS (Business Operating System as a Service), a full-stack orchestration platform that reimagines how healthcare workflows operate. Unlike typical AI assistants or robotic process automation (RPA) tools that break easily with system changes, BOSS decomposes institutional workflows into micro-tasks and delegates them to an intelligent network of AI agents, including LLMs (Large Language Models), digital twins, and reinforcement learning models.

Think of BOSS as an operating system not for individual users, but for entire institutions. It operates across a healthcare organization's software ecosystem, enabling a parallel digital workforce that complements human teams.

As Kshitij Jaggi, RISA’s co-founder and CEO, states: “We’ve had Windows, we’ve had Linux, we’ve had Mac—each OS helped humans extract more from machines. But now, we’re drowning in software. Software that was supposed to get work done has become work itself. BOSS is an AI OS for the post-ChatGPT era—where work is no longer about learning tools, but simply expressing intent.”

In real-world deployments, BOSS has already demonstrated its value. At a leading U.S. cancer center, it cut prior authorization times from 30 minutes to under five, processed over $1 million in medications, reduced administrative costs by 66%, and freed up 80% of staff time.

This isn’t just about saving time—it’s about saving lives. As Dr. Jeffrey Vacirca, CEO of New York Cancer and Blood Specialists, noted: “Every delay in treatment can affect outcomes. Prior authorizations continue to slow us down. What RISA is building is not just smart technology. It removes barriers so our teams can move faster and stay focused on what matters most: caring for patients.”

The Technical Heart: An AI OS Built for Complexity

RISA’s BOSS is built for “low-entropy system design”, according to co-founder and CTO Kumar Shivang. In practice, this means creating environments where AI agents can function efficiently even in the face of high system complexity. Inspired by cognitive science principles like System 2 thinking (which involves slow, deliberate, and logical decision-making), BOSS is designed to bring a state of “flow” to artificial agents—enabling them to operate with precision across highly regulated and multifaceted domains like healthcare.

By tightly integrating with systems of record such as Flatiron Health’s EMR, BOSS moves beyond data analysis to enable real-time orchestration. This positions RISA as more than a tool provider—it becomes a platform for AI-native institutions, where intelligent agents dynamically collaborate with human teams.

Founders with Domain Depth

RISA Labs was founded by IIT Kanpur alumni and longtime collaborators Kshitij Jaggi and Kumar Shivang, who previously scaled the healthcare startup Urban Health. Their firsthand experience with slow, error-prone healthcare workflows motivated them to rethink the entire system from the ground up. Their early research into digital twins and operational modeling—culminating in the co-authored whitepaper “Digital Twin Ecosystem in Oncology Clinical Operations”—laid the foundation for what would become BOSS.

Now, their work is resonating with top investors and clinical leaders alike. Binny Bansal, the lead investor, framed it as part of a much larger trend: “As AI agents unbundle the $4.6 trillion services industry, RISA’s BOSS leads the way—proven in oncology and built to scale.”

What’s Next

With fresh funding in hand, RISA aims to deploy BOSS in 100 additional cancer centers over the next two years. But the company’s ambitions don’t stop at prior authorizations. Its long-term vision is to become the AI transformation partner across the oncology ecosystem—from operational coordination to clinical decision support—ultimately building a unified orchestration layer for AI in healthcare.

As the healthcare industry continues to grapple with rising costs and workforce shortages, RISA Labs stands out as a company not just building AI tools, but reengineering how institutions function. By letting AI agents handle the operational grind, RISA is giving time—and focus—back to those who need it most: the doctors, nurses, and staff on the frontlines of cancer care.

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