Here’s an exclusive look at the pitch deck that Yuzu Health, which offers AI-powered health plans for startups, used to raise $5 million from investors including Lachy Groom and Altman Capital

• Yuzu Health just raised seed funding from Lachy Groom, Neo, and Day One Ventures.
• The healthtech startup uses AI to offer self-funded health plans to startups and small businesses.
• Check out the 15-slide presentation Yuzu Health used to raise $5 million.

Big tech companies and other large corporations are known for providing generous perks such as free food, travel stipends, and top-tier healthcare coverage — the latter of which is frequently made possible through self-funded plans, in which employers collect premiums from their employees and then pay out claims.

Yuzu Health is working to bring that system to the startup world. The company, which uses artificial intelligence to manage self-funded healthcare plans for small businesses, recently raised $5 million in seed funding led by Lachy Groom, with participation from Neo, Day One Ventures, Altman Capital, WndrCo, and Browder Capital. The round also included unicorn founders and operators from startups such as OpenAI, Stripe, Coalition, Brex, Notion, Deel, Mercury, Lattice, and Vanta.

Large corporations use self-funding to tailor their benefits and pass on higher-quality care and lower costs to their employees. However, self-funding is difficult for startups and other small businesses because it is difficult to predict how much to charge in premium costs. Traditionally, a third-party administrator is required to manually manage claims and payout, which is not cost-effective for insurers when working with a small business.

That’s where Yuzu Health, based in New York, comes in. Machine learning is being used to automate claims and payment processing, making self-funding a viable option for startups.

Yuzu Health’s CEO, Max Kauderer, who cofounded the startup with Russell Pekala and Ryan Lee, told Insider in an interview that when the trio first set out to build something in the healthcare space, their own experience trying to secure good health insurance inspired them to make self-funded plans an option for small businesses.

“We set out to get ourselves insured. It was time-consuming and costly, and no one we spoke with, including investors and other founders, had a good answer,” he said.

Many of the people Kauderer spoke with about the issue later became investors in the startup because they, too, had experienced the difficulties of providing employees with a good insurance plan. According to him, Yuzu Health currently powers ten healthcare plans with thousands of members.

“Building this tech layer is changing the paradigm and reducing costs,” he said. “Broadly, we’re excited about being modular and, as a new player in the space, unlocking startups’ abilities to get self-funded plans.”

Yuzu Health joins a growing ecosystem of startups that assist other startups in running their businesses and providing better benefits and conditions for their employees. Rippling, an HR and IT administrator that raised $500 million in Series E funding this spring, and Vouch, a startup insurance provider that raised $160 million, are also in the space.