Asepha has closed a $4 million seed round led by Glasswing Ventures and Core Innovation Capital, with participation from Panache, RedBud, Ripple Ventures, and Front Row Ventures. The young healthtech startup aims to transform pharmacy operations by deploying AI agents to tackle the administrative burdens that plague pharmacists daily.

Founded in 2023 by Eunice Wu (PharmD, CEO) and Can Uncu (CTO), Asepha emerged from Wu’s own experience as a pharmacist. She spent years drowning in paperwork instead of serving patients - a problem she recognized as systemic. Uncu brought technical depth from his time creating AMD’s MI300X chip. Together, they built AI tools centered on the ground truth of pharmacy work

The Problem with Traditional PBMs

PBMs were originally designed to streamline how employers and insurers manage medication coverage. But over time, they evolved into gatekeepers - adding layers of bureaucracy, markups, and contract terms that few outside their internal legal departments could interpret. Employers often discover too late that their drug spend is inflated by factors completely outside of their control.

Asepha is attacking this head-on by allowing employers to act more like their own PBM - but with radically improved visibility and smarter automation. Through the Asepha platform, HR and finance leaders can craft personalized benefits strategies, access real-time analytics, and negotiate with pharmacy networks directly.

Full Transparency, Real-Time Adjustments

The company's platform provides real-time dashboards that show employers exactly how their plans are performing - where dollars are going, which medications are driving costs, and what opportunities exist for savings or plan design improvements. It brings a level of flexibility never before seen in this part of the benefits stack.

Asepha’s tech removes the black-box model of drug pricing and replaces it with rules-based, employer-configured plans. This empowers teams to address rising costs proactively rather than reactively.

Asepha's breakthrough wasn’t just in technology - it was in mindset. Instead of trying to work around the limitations imposed by traditional PBMs, the company asked a better question: what if employers didn’t need a middleman at all? What if they could become the central agent in managing pharmacy benefits? This insight flipped the power dynamic. By repositioning the employer from a passive participant to an active orchestrator, Asepha turned a cost burden into a strategic advantage.

Founders in every vertical should take note: sometimes the most disruptive move isn't to build a better tool for the system - it's to redefine who actually needs to own the system in the first place. The key isn't simply identifying inefficiencies but challenging the very assumptions your industry treats as immovable. Ask yourself - where is your customer giving up power without realizing it?

Strong Team, Backed by Visionary Investors

Asepha was founded by a team of healthcare technology veterans with deep experience in benefits administration, pharmacy operations, and digital health platforms. This background has given them a sophisticated view of how fragmented, outdated, and profit-driven the traditional PBM model has become - and more importantly, how to fix it without triggering compliance nightmares for employers.

The $4 million seed round will be used to scale engineering, build out integrations with pharmacies and employer health plans, and expand go-to-market efforts across mid-market employers. Investors in the round, while undisclosed, are said to include prominent healthcare and fintech-focused funds, validating Asepha's thesis that benefits management is overdue for innovation.

Employer Demand for Smarter Healthcare Spend

Today’s companies are more cost-sensitive than ever. With economic uncertainty, shrinking margins, and a fierce talent landscape, benefits have become both a financial burden and a competitive differentiator. HR leaders are looking for ways to control spend while improving the employee experience - two goals that rarely go together under traditional models.

Asepha makes it possible to do both. By enabling employers to selectively subsidize medications, steer usage toward generics, and monitor engagement in real time, the company helps turn pharmacy benefits into a growth lever, not a financial sinkhole.

Looking Ahead

In the next 12 months, Asepha plans to double its team, deepen its data infrastructure, and move toward supporting fully self-funded plans. The roadmap includes employer-driven formularies, more automation tools for finance teams, and even AI-powered plan simulations to model drug spend before changes are implemented.

If Asepha delivers on its promises, it won’t just be a better PBM alternative - it could become the new standard for how prescription benefits are designed and controlled in the modern workplace.