Exclusive: EZ Health emerges from stealth with $26M for senior-care navigation
Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
EZ Health, a senior-care startup, emerged from stealth with $26 million in funding, CEO Artem Petakov tells Axios exclusively.
Why it matters: Venture investors are increasingly treating the care economy as a durable category.
How it works: EZ Health provides seniors with a care navigator by phone, using AI to help guides analyze medical records, surface problems and find local resources.
- Medicare covers the service, with physician certification required.
Follow the money: EZ Health raised a $21 million seed round in May 2026 and previously raised $5 million in pre-seed.
- Investors include Primary Ventures and Construct Capital.
By the numbers: Startups serving older adults—including Medicare navigation companies—attracted $7.1 billion across 436 deals over the past decade and represented 34% of care-economy VC investment in 2024.
What they're saying: Petakov says as health care gets more complex, trusted navigators can shape where consumers seek care.
- "Whoever owns the navigation side for consumers, whoever has the trust, is going to control a lot of the decision making."
Catch up quick: A 2024 Medicare reimbursement change created a new venture market for care navigation connecting seniors to health and social services.
- Investors have also been increasingly putting larger sums into AI-enabled digital health companies.
What's next: EZ Health will focus on scaling its human-plus-AI model, expanding its local resource data and eventually testing its impact on health outcomes and costs in a large randomized trial.
