How a little-known AI startup found itself in the middle of a Google privacy firestorm

Tech has been trying to provide better employee benefits navigation for years.

Nayya, like a number of its competitors, is now using AI to tailor benefits recommendations. Employees can give Nayya information about their health and lifestyle, and the startup will use that data to guide those employees to benefits they already have. The tech also keeps track of employees’ existing benefits usage, like how much of their deductible has been met.

Nayya says it currently provides benefits navigation tech to over 1,000 employers, from law firm Goodwin Procter to health system Bon Secours Mercy Health. Most of Nayya’s contracts are with employers’ systems of record, the benefits management software they already use, like Workday or ADP, Chehrazi said.

Nayya also contracts directly with some employers. While Google uses Workday to manage administrative tasks like payroll, it uses a different platform to manage its employee benefits called Benefitfocus, Chehrazi said. To connect to Benefitfocus, Nayya contracts directly with Google.

Google struck a direct contract this year with Nayya to help employees decide which benefits they should opt into during open enrollment, Nayya CEO Sina Chehrazi told BI. That integration leverages Nayya’s benefits decision support platform rather than the startup’s agentic AI.

More of Nayya’s tools will be rolled out to Google employees in future months, Chehrazi said, such as technology that helps employees save money by pre-filling and submitting reimbursement forms.

Nayya says it helps employees save money, including by leading them to fully-covered health services to avoid surprise bills. The return-on-investment for employers is less direct. In theory, employees who can take better advantage of their health benefits will be healthier on average, creating fewer large costs for their employers. Chehrazi said in the longer term, Nayya can show employers which benefits they’re paying for that employees aren’t using to help those employers cut unnecessary services.

Health benefits navigation has previously been an unforgiving market. Many health benefits navigators are once-public companies that have since gone private after struggling on the public markets, like Castlight Health, or decade-old startups, like Included Health.

Chehrazi thinks Nayya is blazing its own path in part because of its focus on seamlessly connecting disparate data sources. The startup has certainly also benefited from its deep partnership with Workday, which has “phenomenal distribution,” Chehrazi said.

He also sees fresh money-saving potential as Nayya’s AI tools offer to take action on behalf of employees, such as filing reimbursement forms.

“That’s the type of ROI that I don’t think some of the V1 or the V2 navigators were as focused on,” he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Tech has been trying to provide better employee benefits navigation for years.

Nayya, like a number of its competitors, is now using AI to tailor benefits recommendations. Employees can give Nayya information about their health and lifestyle, and the startup will use that data to guide those employees to benefits they already have. The tech also keeps track of employees’ existing benefits usage, like how much of their deductible has been met.

Nayya says it currently provides benefits navigation tech to over 1,000 employers, from law firm Goodwin Procter to health system Bon Secours Mercy Health. Most of Nayya’s contracts are with employers’ systems of record, the benefits management software they already use, like Workday or ADP, Chehrazi said.

Nayya also contracts directly with some employers. While Google uses Workday to manage administrative tasks like payroll, it uses a different platform to manage its employee benefits called Benefitfocus, Chehrazi said. To connect to Benefitfocus, Nayya contracts directly with Google.

Google struck a direct contract this year with Nayya to help employees decide which benefits they should opt into during open enrollment, Nayya CEO Sina Chehrazi told BI. That integration leverages Nayya’s benefits decision support platform rather than the startup’s agentic AI.

More of Nayya’s tools will be rolled out to Google employees in future months, Chehrazi said, such as technology that helps employees save money by pre-filling and submitting reimbursement forms.

Nayya says it helps employees save money, including by leading them to fully-covered health services to avoid surprise bills. The return-on-investment for employers is less direct. In theory, employees who can take better advantage of their health benefits will be healthier on average, creating fewer large costs for their employers. Chehrazi said in the longer term, Nayya can show employers which benefits they’re paying for that employees aren’t using to help those employers cut unnecessary services.

Health benefits navigation has previously been an unforgiving market. Many health benefits navigators are once-public companies that have since gone private after struggling on the public markets, like Castlight Health, or decade-old startups, like Included Health.

Chehrazi thinks Nayya is blazing its own path in part because of its focus on seamlessly connecting disparate data sources. The startup has certainly also benefited from its deep partnership with Workday, which has “phenomenal distribution,” Chehrazi said.

He also sees fresh money-saving potential as Nayya’s AI tools offer to take action on behalf of employees, such as filing reimbursement forms.

“That’s the type of ROI that I don’t think some of the V1 or the V2 navigators were as focused on,” he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider