Basata, an AI startup automating specialty care referrals, raises $21 million Series A to speed up patient scheduling

Basata, co-founded by Kaled Alhanafi (former Lyft and Cruise executive) and Chetan Patel (former Medtronic cardiac device engineer), has raised $24.5 million in total funding, including a new $21 million Series A led by Lan Xuezhao of Basis Set Ventures. Cowboy Ventures and Victoria Treyger (through her firm Sofeon) also participated.

The system reads incoming referral documents (typically faxes), extracts clinical information, and deploys an AI voice agent to call patients directly and schedule appointments. Patients can also reach an AI agent at any hour to answer questions or handle tasks like prescription renewals. The company has processed referrals for roughly 500,000 patients to date, with about 100,000 coming in the last month alone.

Specialty practices receive hundreds or thousands of referral documents with small administrative teams, creating a backlog that loses patients not by choice but by capacity. Basata integrates with electronic medical record systems specific to each specialty (starting with cardiology, then urology) and charges practices per document processed and per call handled rather than per seat.