Healthleap, a South African startup founded in 2022 by siblings Jemima and Josiah Meyer, has secured $38 million through seed and Series A funding to advance its AI platform aimed at flagging hospital patients who may be at risk for undiagnosed conditions. The $8 million seed round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital, while Hummingbird Ventures led the $30 million Series A. Initially focused on clinical nutrition, the company shifted to developing a broader system that identifies patients with conditions such as malnutrition or delirium that often go undetected in hospital settings.

The platform integrates with hospital electronic health records and uses advanced language models to analyze both structured data like lab results and vital signs, as well as unstructured clinical notes containing information about symptoms such as weight loss or swallowing difficulties. This combined analysis generates risk scores that are delivered daily to care teams through existing hospital workflows, enabling clinicians to quickly focus on patients who need further evaluation. Healthleap emphasizes that its technology does not diagnose but rather highlights cases warranting closer inspection.

Currently deployed in over 50 hospitals, including major healthcare systems like Penn Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, and Emory Healthcare, Healthleap has expanded its capabilities beyond malnutrition screening to risk detection for aspiration pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and congestive heart failure readmissions, with additional validations underway. The company reports a more than tenfold growth in revenue over the last year and offers contracts priced by hospital bed count, using an outcome-based pricing model that has delivered at least a fivefold return on investment for every customer.

With this new funding, Healthleap plans to invest in engineering, product development, sales, and customer support to broaden its platform coverage to over 40 major health conditions and extend its reach to outpatient and home care settings. The startup highlights the substantial financial and clinical benefits its technology has achieved, citing an example where its malnutrition program generated a $23.8 million annual impact at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania through increased reimbursements and reduced hospital stays.