Today, we’re excited to announce our investment in Avante, the infrastructure layer for modern employee healthcare benefits. Fuse led the $10 million Seed round, joined by HighSage Ventures.
The employer-sponsored benefits market is under strain. HR teams are overwhelmed by administrative work, forced to navigate legacy tools that were never built for today’s demands, while employees are making high-stakes healthcare decisions without the information they need. The current ecosystem relies on a patchwork of point solutions that fail to integrate or scale.
U.S. employers spent more than $1.3 trillion on healthcare last year, making it the second-largest expense after payroll. Despite its size, this market remains under-innovated and inefficient. Benefits are just too important — too expensive — to be run on spreadsheets and outdated portals.
Rohan D’Souza, Avante’s CEO and co-founder, came to us with a clear read on the market. He had spent months in the field talking to customers, brokers, and benefit administrators. The feedback was consistent. Teams want better insights, more automation, and a way to deliver a high-quality benefits experience without adding headcount.
Rohan’s findings align with what we’ve seen. In a survey of VC-backed startups with ties to Seattle, nearly all reported offering health benefits as soon as they raise a priced round. Coverage is table stakes, even for teams under 10. At larger enterprises, the problem only compounds. Dozens of vendors, thousands of employees, and increasing compliance demands create an environment where small inefficiencies turn into massive operational and financial drag.
Company leaders know it matters — for recruiting, retention, and employee well-being — but the infrastructure to support that coverage is often shallow or nonexistent.
Avante is building the operating layer companies will need to respond to these pressures. The platform unifies critical data across claims, vendors, costs, and employee engagement. It gives employers a complete, real-time view of their benefits program and helps them make smarter decisions. From plan design to vendor selection to wellness initiatives, everything is surfaced through a single interface with AI-powered insights at the core.
The result is a more scalable benefits operation that improves outcomes for employees and drives efficiency for employers. Avante automates support, integrates cleanly into existing systems, and captures employee sentiment to identify gaps and inform strategy.
We invested, in part, because we believe this team is uniquely positioned to build this product and go after this market.
Rohan previously served as Chief Product Officer at Olive AI, where he played a key role as the healthcare tech company scaled to a $4 billion valuation.
He’s joined by Co-founder Carly Eckert, MD, Ph.D, an epidemiologist and former EVP at Olive, who now leads innovation and impact at Avante.
Kabir Shahani, executive chairman, founder of Amperity, one of Seattle’s most successful enterprise startups.
Nick Cecil, founding head of engineering, brings deep technical expertise from his time as director of software engineering at Salesforce
This is a rare combination of healthcare fluency, product rigor, and enterprise software execution.
With the funding, the team is looking to expand across key functions. Avante is recruiting for five positions: Senior Product Manager, Head of Revenue, Software Engineer, Junior Software Engineer, and Analytics Engineer. All roles are live on the Ascend Job Board.
We believe Avante will define a new standard for how companies manage and deliver employee benefits, and we’re proud to be a supporter from day one.
