Digital health · Workforce and staffing
Adni
An app that began as a wearable clip-on light for night-shift nurses has become an AI powered career and recruiting platform for healthcare workers, backed by Y Combinator and used by staffing agencies and health systems to source clinicians.
A light, then a hub, then a name change
Anthony Scarpone-Lambert and Jennifferre Mancillas met at a Johnson & Johnson sponsored nurse hackathon in the fall of 2019. He was a nursing student at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a NICU nurse in California and a J&J Nursing Innovation Fellow. Their first project together did not go anywhere, but the two kept talking, and when the pandemic hit, they had a shared complaint: nurses lacked basic tools for the job.
The complaint that stuck was about light. Checking on a sleeping patient meant either flipping on the overhead lights, waking the patient, or fumbling with a phone flashlight, unsanitary and awkward. Scarpone-Lambert and Mancillas built the uNight Light, a clip-on LED with three settings, red for night vision, white for close work, blue to stay alert, made to survive hospital-grade disinfectant. It launched in February 2021 and sold thousands of units in its first weeks.
The device won Scarpone-Lambert the 2021 President’s Innovation Prize at Penn, and the pair became, by their own account, the first fully nurse-led team to go through Y Combinator, in the Summer 2021 batch. From there the company expanded past hardware. The Lumify Hub, later the Lumify Marketplace, gathered scrubs, shoes, continuing education, and mental health resources into one place for healthcare workers, with brand partners paying to be listed and buyers earning reward points.
In March 2023 the marketplace was renamed Adni, from the Latin adnitor, to lean upon. The company said in its own announcement that it had run into trademark trouble expanding the Lumify Care name, registered for the wearable light specifically, into a broader marketplace brand. The uNight Light and its catalog stayed inside the newly named Adni.
The gap it says it is closing
Adni’s current pitch is less about products and more about labor. Its own site cites 80 plus days and roughly $60,000 to replace a single nurse, and says half of new nurses leave within two years. The pitch to employers is that legacy job boards are expensive and clinicians are hard to reach, and that Adni's clinician community, career coaches, and AI agents can source and screen candidates faster and cheaper than the alternative.
In November 2025, the company introduced Allie, described as its first AI agent, built to manage a clinician’s job search on one side and to source, screen, and re-engage candidates for employers on the other. By early 2026 the pitch had moved from marketplace to what the company calls the first all-in-one career app for healthcare workers, with staffing agencies and health systems posting jobs directly inside it.
Two nurses running the company
Scarpone-Lambert remains CEO. Mancillas is described across company materials as co-founder. Neither has left the venture in the years since founding, a rarer pattern among first-time nurse founders than among the software companies Adni now competes with for recruiting budget. Both frame the business as personal: Mancillas has said nursing let her combine caring for people with fixing problems, and Scarpone-Lambert has said the versatility of the profession, bedside work, business, tech, medicine, was what drew him in.
From marketplace to hiring pipeline
The partnerships Adni has announced since the rebrand track that shift plainly. Where the Lumify Hub era was about brand partners selling gear, the Adni era is about staffing agencies and hospitals posting jobs. MedPro Healthcare Staffing, founded in 1983, began listing its openings on Adni's Career Hub in May 2025. Penn Medicine, a health system with about 49,000 employees, followed in July 2025. United Health Care Staffing, a travel nursing and allied health agency operating since 2004, launched on the platform in January 2026, giving its recruiters access to Allie's voice AI outreach and a white-labeled rewards storefront. AB Staffing, Avani Healthcare Staffing, Beyond Medical Staffing, and OneStaff Medical have made similar announcements.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Founding year | Company materials and LinkedIn say 2021. Penn Today (2022) and Daily Nurse (2023), both independent, say the founders “set out in 2020” to build Lumify Care. Tracxn also lists 2020. | Differs across sources |
| 2022 seed round | Technical.ly and Daily Nurse both independently reported a $1.25 million seed round with Y Combinator, Flare Capital, Gaingels, Fresco Capital, Crista Galli Ventures, and angel investor Mark Switaj. | Independent |
| Total funding reported | Aggregator estimates disagree: Crustdata lists $275,000 pre-seed (Aug 2021) plus $1.2 million seed (May 2022), about $1.475 million total. Tracxn lists $1.38 million across three rounds. Neither is a primary filing. | Aggregators disagree |
| Later backers named by the company | Adni's own materials now list Liquid 2 Ventures, Augment, and angel investor Adam Grant among its backers, alongside the founders of CareRev, Clipboard Health, and Papa. No press report or filing dates when these investors came in or how much they put in. | Not found |
| SEC Form D | No Form D under Adni, Adni, Inc., or Lumify Care appears in the records reviewed for this profile. | Not found |
| Employee headcount | LinkedIn's own company page lists a 2 to 10 employee size band. Crustdata, a third-party data vendor, estimates 54 employees as of September 2026, up from about 19 in May 2024. Y Combinator's page listed a team of 5 around 2022. | Differs across sources |
| Clinician network size | Company materials in 2026 describe “200,000+ nurses and allied health workers” and a “verified database of 2.4 million licensed clinicians.” Blog posts from mid to late 2025 describe “150,000+ verified engaged clinicians.” Neither figure is independently audited. | Company-stated |
| Named customers and partners | Penn Medicine, MedPro Healthcare Staffing, United Health Care Staffing, AB Staffing, Avani Healthcare Staffing, Beyond Medical Staffing, and OneStaff Medical each appear in dated Adni blog posts or LinkedIn posts naming the partnership. Massachusetts General Hospital, ChristianaCare, Medical Solutions, Medline, Jaanuu, and Proliability appear in the company's own customer list without individual announcements found. | Company and partner-stated |
Read plainly: the wearable light and the 2022 seed round are the two facts here with independent confirmation. Everything about the company's current scale, its full investor list, and its later fundraising sits on the company's own word, with aggregator estimates that do not agree with each other or with the company.
What to watch
- Whether a Form D or other public filing ever appears for the funding the company now claims from Liquid 2 Ventures, Augment, and Adam Grant.
- Whether independent press covers Adni's shift from marketplace to AI recruiting platform the way it covered the 2022 seed round.
- Whether named partners like Penn Medicine and MedPro post updated hiring or volume results.
- Whether the clinician network figure the company cites, 200,000 versus 150,000 in different 2025 and 2026 materials, gets reconciled.
In their words
“I just loved how nursing presented that versatility, whether I wanted to be a bedside nurse after nursing school or whether I wanted to start a business or go into tech, or go to med school after.”
Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, co-founder and CEO, Nurse.org interview, 2021 · Interview
“Nursing felt like the perfect mix of caring for people and fixing problems, which are two of my biggest passions.”
Jennifferre Mancillas, co-founder, Nurse.org interview, 2021 · Interview
“We both really shared this frustration that frankly, health care workers lack access to the tools and resources we need.”
Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, Nurse.org interview, 2021 · Interview
“Anthony and I met in the fall of 2019 at a hackathon. This particular hackathon was about 200 different nurses, and Anthony and I were on the same team.”
Jennifferre Mancillas, Daily Nurse interview, May 2023 · Interview
“Jennifferre and I didn’t start Lumify the tech company as engineers. We had frontline perspective.”
Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, Technical.ly, May 2022 · Independent
“Every worker should have an AI career assistant managing their professional journey, and every employer should have an AI agent automating sourcing, engagement, and retention.”
Adni blog, launch of Allie, November 2025 · Company release
“Their nurse-led approach to innovation resonates deeply with us.”
Stacey Edwards, Senior Vice President of Talent and Marketing, MedPro Healthcare Staffing, quoted in Adni blog, May 2025 · Partner-stated
“Adni gives us the platform to reach more healthcare professionals, streamline access to opportunity, and strengthen care teams nationwide without losing the human connection that defines us.”
Sammy Sheth, CEO, United Health Care Staffing, quoted in Adni blog, January 2026 · Partner-stated
Related companies
Sources
- IndependentNursing Student Invents Lumify Wearable LED Light, Tech Startup
- IndependentFrom wearable light to tech startup
- IndependentNurse-led startup Lumify Care raised a seed round and launched its marketplace app
- IndependentMeet the Nurse Dynamic Duo Behind the Adni Marketplace App
- IndependentAdni company profile
- AggregatorAdni company profile, funding rounds
- AggregatorAdni company profile, funding rounds
- CompanyMeet Lumify Care (YC S21): Tools to support healthcare pros
- CompanyThe Lumify Marketplace is now Adni
- CompanyMeet Allie, the AI Assistant for Healthcare Workers and Recruiters
- CompanyMedPro launches 7,000+ jobs on Adni
- CompanyPenn Medicine posts jobs for nurses on the Adni app
- CompanyUnited Health Care Staffing launches on Adni
- CompanyAdni | Healthcare hiring on autopilot
- CompanyAdni company page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
