Carecode, a Brazilian startup backed by a16z and QED, is putting AI agents to work in healthcare.

AI holds great promise for healthcare, but not just on the medical side; many startups are convinced that machine learning-based systems can do a lot for related tasks like meeting scheduling and confirmations.

Brazilian startup Carecode this is among AI believers. It is secretly driven by an ambition to reduce healthcare costs and improve medical outcomes by developing AI agents that focus on tasks that occur before and after a medical appointment and are typically handled by a call center.

“We think that only the moment with the doctor is important, but after spending 10 years in healthcare, I realized that these moments (around the appointment) are as important as the medical appointment,” said CEO Thomaz Srougi (pictured right). image above) told TechCrunch.

Srougi is from a family of doctors, but he is not himself; his first-hand knowledge of health care comes from him Founder Consulta DrA private healthcare provider that has raised nearly $168 million in funding, and he remains chairman.

Carecode is still early in its fundraising journey, but already has an impressive cap: its $4.3 million pre-seed round was largely funded by a16z and QED, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, K50 Ventures, and Latitud Ventures. Profile figures from Brazil’s tech scene, including Nubank founder David Vélez.

Latin America still has venture capital The “beginning winter” is passing but – as this pre-seed growth highlights – there is still funding for entrepreneurs with backgrounds like Srougi and his co-founder Pedro Magalhães, former CTO at several other startups including BEES Bank Brasil and Zé Delivery.

“I think that counts for a lot for big VCs, especially when the world is upside down,” suggested Srougi, whose a16z partner, Gabriel Vasquez, helped nurture the idea for Carecode and take the startup from planning to execution.

Srougi is also using the connections he’s made throughout his career to find partners who can pilot Carecode. According to startups, the first results with a partner look promising. As a result, its AI agents can do much of the work of a typical healthcare call center for a fraction of the cost, and even go a step further. by actively filling voids while leaving employees to handle the most complex cases.

Importantly for Brazil, Carecode welcomes users wherever they are, usually on WhatsApp – where it supports both text and audio messages. “This is really important because most of the elderly and low-income individuals prefer to send WhatsApp voice instead of typing,” Srougi said, adding that voice calls are also on the roadmap.

These localization arrangements are one of the things that make Carecode different from US benchmarks, e.g SierraAI startup founded by Bret Taylor.

Another difference is Carecode’s vertical focus. According to Camila Vieira Freitas, partner and head of Brazil at QED, this gives the startup an advantage over horizontal approaches that “often require multiple solutions for low results, negatively impact the customer experience and leave significant value untapped.”

Market size can be a limitation for a vertical model, but healthcare in Brazil isn’t exactly a small place, and neither is Carecode’s problem. According to Srougi, healthcare companies in Brazil spend 50% of their revenue on contact centers and administrative payroll—about $100 billion annually.

Srougi and his team believe that a vertical position in a market with specific requirements, such as healthcare, will help Carecode build a moat against more generic competitors, but the startup can also diversify later. “In the future, we can go into insurance, for example, life insurance and other sectors related to healthcare. We want to use payments. We can use financing. So it all comes down to healthcare,” he added.