Health insurance technology · Claims and cost decisioning
Insurf
A two person, Y Combinator backed startup building software that prices health plans against real filed rates and fights denied claims with source cited appeals. It has no FDA record, no SEC filing and no named customer to date, because it is only months old.
A number that lies
Insurf's pitch starts with a claim about a simulation. In the company's launch post, the founders say that across 2,000 simulated years of coverage, the plan with the lowest sticker premium was never the plan that actually cost the least. In one of those runs, the cheaper looking option would have cost a household $8,052 more over a single bad year.
“That's one person,” the founders wrote. “Multiply the risk across a family. Across a company.”
The company has not published the simulation itself, its data sources, or its methodology beyond that summary, so the figure should be read as company stated until a filing or an outside audit tests it.
Two products, one dataset
Insurf sells two things. Surely is a cost engine that the company says ranks health plans by what they will actually cost across a year, premiums, deductibles, drug tiers, networks and out of pocket caps, sourced from government filings. Inveto is the other half: clinics upload a denial and the clinical record, and the software returns what the company calls a source cited, physician signed appeal or a supported prior authorization.
The founders describe the two as feeding each other. Every Inveto outcome that a clinic authorizes becomes, in the company's words, rights cleared data about what a plan actually approves or denies, which then trains Surely's pricing. “What plans cost + what plans do,” the launch post says. “Nobody else has both.”
The company's homepage states that Inveto's patient data access is enabled only after a customer specific business associate agreement and launch checks are complete, and that Insurf is not a licensed insurance agency; enrollment support runs through a separately licensed insurance producer who may earn carrier commissions, disclosed on estimates.
The problem: a forced re-shop coming in 2028
The company's argument for timing rests on a regulatory date. It says that in 2028, Affordable Care Act marketplace plans stop auto renewing, so more than 20 million enrollees will have to actively re-pick a plan every year, a shift it calls the largest forced re-shop in the history of American health insurance, covering roughly $150 billion in premiums decided annually. It also points to the federal government's own projection that 800,000 employers and more than 11 million people will move to ICHRA, the arrangement that lets a company give each worker a fixed allowance to buy an individual plan instead of carrying one group policy. Insurf estimates employers can save about $5,000 per employee per year under that model.
None of those macro figures are unique to Insurf; they describe a market opportunity the company is betting on, not a result it has produced. The company's own audit tool, which prices a sketched team or an uploaded census against plans filed with regulators for a given county, is explicit that its output is “an honest upper bound, labeled as such, not a quote.”
Two friends from Brown
Chang Lu and Bryan Chung met during orientation at Brown University. According to the company's launch post, Lu was admitted to medical school at 17 and later worked a pharmacy counter, where he watched patients pay out of pocket for coverage they had been promised. Chung is described as having placed internationally in computer science and physics competitions and having published IEEE research since high school. A personal website archived from Chung's high school years lists research stints at Cambridge Centre for International Research, UC Santa Cruz and a CMU and RIT primate research lab, along with interests in quantum computing, consistent with that account, though it does not itself list an IEEE publication.
Y Combinator's company page names Gustaf Alstromer as the batch partner working with Insurf.
Where it stands
Insurf says Inveto is live with clinics in Texas, Georgia and California, none named publicly. The company has not disclosed revenue, a customer count, or a funding amount. Its site, its Y Combinator listing and one independent newsletter tracking the Summer 2026 batch are, as of this writing, the extent of the public record.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Form D | None on file for Insurf, Inc. as of Sep 25, 2026. | Not found |
| FDA, NIH, NSF, PubMed, clinical trials | No records found under Insurf, Inveto or Surely. | Not found |
| Y Combinator listing | Confirms Summer 2026 batch, team size 3, founded 2026, and partner Gustaf Alstromer. Lists the company's location as Providence, RI, while the company's own brief for this profile gives San Francisco. | Differs from company brief |
| Live clinic customers | Described as real clinics across Texas, Georgia and California. No clinic is named. | Company-stated |
| Savings figures ($5,000 per employee, $8,052 in one simulated year) | Company-run simulation and projection, methodology not published. | Company-stated |
| Independent coverage | Named in a Y Combinator batch trend roundup as an example of “AI-native radiology and clinical operations,” which mischaracterizes a company built around insurance claims and plan pricing rather than radiology. | Mischaracterized |
| Founder background | Co-founder Bryan Chung's own archived personal site independently documents a high school research and competition record, consistent with the company's claim about his background, though it does not itself confirm an IEEE publication. | Independent |
Read plainly: everything that can be checked against a public record, FDA, SEC, NIH, NSF, court or trial registry, comes back empty, because none of those apply yet to a pre revenue, pre filing startup at this stage. What is left is the company's own description of its product and its market, a single outside mention that gets the product wrong, and independently verifiable background on one founder. Nothing here should be read as evidence that Inveto's appeals or Surely's pricing perform as described in practice.
What to watch
- Whether Insurf names any of its clinic customers in Texas, Georgia or California.
- A first SEC Form D, which would disclose a priced round and investor count.
- Whether the company publishes its cost simulation methodology or the underlying rate data behind the $5,000 and $8,052 figures.
- Whether the 2028 ACA auto renewal change proceeds as the company describes it.
In their words
“American health insurance is f***ed: chosen by guesswork, enforced by denial. We built the engine that fixes both halves.”
Chang Lu and Bryan Chung, co-founders, Y Combinator launch post, 2026 · Company release
“In our data, the lowest-premium plan was the lowest-cost option in 0 of 2,000 simulated years.”
Insurf launch post, Y Combinator, 2026 · Company release
“Every contract-authorized Inveto outcome becomes rights-cleared data about what plans actually do, including approvals, denials, appeals; Surely reads all of it.”
Insurf launch post, Y Combinator, 2026 · Company release
“Everyone sells plans. Nobody prices them. We compute.”
Insurf launch post, Y Combinator, 2026 · Company release
“We find people and companies the plan that costs the least. We fight the denials that cost the most.”
Insurf homepage, insurf.io, accessed Sep 25, 2026 · Company-stated
“It prices your team, by age and ZIP code, against the real individual-market plans filed with regulators for 2026, and compares that to what employer group coverage typically costs. The result is an honest upper bound, labeled as such, not a quote.”
Insurf audit page, insurf.io, accessed Sep 25, 2026 · Company-stated
“Vertical-specific “AI-native” replacement of professional services... AI-native radiology and clinical operations (Insurf).”
Ollie Forsyth, Y Combinator Summer 2026 Batch, NEW ECONOMIES, Sep 1, 2026 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- CompanyInsurf: The AI-Native Decision Layer for Health Insurance, including launch post
- CompanyInsurf homepage, “The individual market, priced to the dollar”
- CompanyInsurf free ICHRA savings audit page
- CompanyInsurf ICHRA guide page
- IndependentY Combinator Summer 2026 Batch
- IndependentInsurf Funding, Complete Analysis
- IndependentBryan Chung, personal website and portfolio
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text and company search, no Form D found for Insurf
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
