SpendRule raises $2 million to revolutionise hospital invoice validation with AI

SpendRule, a startup specialising in AI-driven payment validation for hospital services, secures $2 million in seed funding to scale its automated invoice matching platform amid rising healthcare costs and administrative waste.

SpendRule, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to intercept erroneous payments for purchased services, has closed a $2 million seed round as it emerges from stealth and begins scaling across hospital systems. The financing was led by Abun...

dant Venture Partners and included participation from the MemorialCare Innovation Fund and Zeal Capital Partners, according to TechCrunch.

The company, founded in 2025 by Chris Heckler and Joseph Akintolayo, layers on top of a health system’s existing enterprise resource planning, contract management and accounts-payable processes to validate invoices against negotiated contract terms before payments are issued. SpendRule says its software converts contract language into machine-enforceable controls to perform what it describes as automatic four-way matching, purchase order, receipt, invoice and contract, flagging mismatches with supporting evidence so issues can be resolved upstream without replacing legacy ERP or AP systems. The firm’s website reiterates that the platform turns contracts into the first line of defence against overpayments by checking every invoice line in real time.

Joseph Akintolayo, the company’s chief technology officer and co-founder, put the problem plainly: “Most purchased services contracts sit in a filing cabinet – literal or digital – disconnected from the payments they’re supposed to govern,” he told Pressnewswire. “We change that by turning those agreements into code – encoding the actual terms, conditions, and obligations into real-time payment controls. This enables true 4-way matching – Purchase Order, Receipt, Invoice, and Contract Terms – automatically validating invoices against their contract before payment. Discrepancies are flagged with evidence and resolved upstream, without disrupting existing ERP or AP systems.”

SpendRule targets a narrow but costly area of hospital procurement: purchased services and other line items that typically do not carry barcodes and are often harder to match to contract terms than physical supplies. The startup positions itself against legacy invoice auditors and marketplace firms such as SpendMend and GHX, while emphasising prevention at the point of payment rather than recovering losses after the fact.

Hospitals have a pressing incentive to adopt tools that tighten payment controls. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that hospital spending accounted for 40% of the growth in national health expenditures between 2022 and 2024, driven by higher prices and greater volumes of care. Procurement analyses also show medical and surgical supplies alone consume a material share of hospital budgets, with some estimates putting supply spending in the tens of billions nationally. Industry trackers and interactive health-spending tools underline how rising hospital costs feed through to government programmes, employers and households.

SpendRule says several major health systems are already using its platform, including OSF HealthCare, Kettering Health, MemorialCare and MUSC Health. Dave Fergus, chief supply chain officer at OSF HealthCare, described the operational impact: “We manage thousands of purchased services contracts, many of them hundreds of pages long,” he said. “Before SpendRule, there was no realistic way to ensure every invoice line matched the contract before payment. Now, that validation happens automatically, giving us confidence in invoice accuracy, stopping the leakage, and freeing our teams from thousands of hours of manual approvals each year.”

The newly raised capital will be directed towards enlarging the team and further development of the company’s AI infrastructure as SpendRule seeks wider deployment across health systems, TechCrunch reports and the company confirmed on its site. The approach mirrors a broader market push toward embedding contract intelligence and automated controls into financial workflows to protect hospital margins and reduce administrative waste.

As hospitals confront continued cost pressures, tools that can enforce contracted terms at payment may offer a way to curb avoidable spending and bolster financial resilience. SpendRule’s move from stealth and the backing it has attracted signal investor interest in solutions that aim to catch leakage early rather than hunt for recoveries later.

Source: Noah Wire Services