Baba raises $40 million to help Medicare patients manage their care

Baba, a New York company that helps Medicare patients manage their care, raised $40 million on Oct. 20, 2026. The Series A round, an early major funding round, was led by FirstMark Capital. CVS Health Ventures and Valtrius joined, along with earlier backers General Catalyst, Genius Ventures and Ground Up Ventures. Baba says it will hire more clinical staff, expand its AI research and work with more health plans.

What Baba does

Baba calls itself a care partner for patients and their families. Each patient gets a dedicated team of care coordinators and licensed therapists, with AI in support. The team helps connect specialist visits, hospital discharges, behavioral health, in-home support, and needs like housing and transportation. Baba says it has supported more than 10,000 patients and families across the country. More than 100,000 families are on its waiting list.

Why the problem is growing

Nearly 70 million Americans have Medicare. The company says the number of specialists the average patient sees each year has risen more than 40% over two decades. That means more doctors, more paperwork and more calls to keep straight.

Family members often carry that load. Baba cites more than 63 million Americans serving as family caregivers, up 20 million over the past 10 years.

Testing the AI

Baba recently released BabaBench, a test of how well AI agents handle long patient advocacy jobs. These include paperwork, calls with insurers, billing and follow-up that can stretch over weeks or months. Baba says most AI tests only check whether a model answers a question correctly. BabaBench checks whether an agent can finish the whole job without privacy violations or prohibited actions. It is published as a preprint on arXiv and was accepted to an upcoming NeurIPS workshop.

Humans stay involved. Carter Prince of CVS Health Ventures said general AI agents cannot solve healthcare navigation alone, and that training on specific long tasks with people in the loop is what makes Baba promising.

Government backing

In June, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services picked Baba for its ACCESS Model. This is a 10-year test of technology-supported care for chronic conditions. Baba was chosen for all four tracks: early cardio-kidney-metabolic, cardio-kidney-metabolic, musculoskeletal and behavioral health. Baba also has partnerships with national health plans, the American Stroke Foundation and the American Breast Cancer Foundation.

What is not known yet

• What Baba costs patients, or how it is paid for.
• Which health plans or regions can use it today.
• How patients get off the waiting list.
• Whether the service improves health or lowers bills.