Health IT & clinical workflow · Nursing communication
Kabilah
A generative AI platform built to replace the paper report sheet nurses use to hand off patients between shifts. Backed by Y Combinator with a small disclosed seed round, twice a healthcare pitch competition finalist in 2025, and with no named hospital customer on the public record yet.
A shift that starts on paper
Picture an inpatient bedside nurse starting a twelve hour shift with five patients, a common staffing ratio. The outgoing nurse rattles off a rapid fire handoff. The incoming nurse scribbles what she can catch onto a paper report sheet, then spends the rest of the shift updating those notes by hand, chasing physicians, and digging through a dense electronic health record for context that did not make it into the handoff.
That is the scene Kabilah's founders describe on their Y Combinator company page. Their pitch is to replace the paper sheet with what they call an Intelligent Patient Advocate: a digital report sheet, auto filled from the EHR where possible, that summarizes each patient for the next nurse and lets that nurse chat with the record instead of paging through it.
The problem, as the company frames it
Kabilah's own materials put the stakes in blunt terms. The company's website cites a statistic that 44 percent of nurses who quit name burnout as the primary cause, though it does not cite where that figure comes from. A Hiretop write up on the company separately states that 80 percent of severe medical errors occur during patient handoff, again without naming a primary source. Both numbers are widely repeated in healthcare workforce commentary, but neither has been traced here to a study or agency record, so they should be read as the company's framing of the problem rather than an independently verified statistic.
Kabilah's answer is narrower than a clinical device: a communication and documentation layer that sits on top of the EHR rather than a diagnostic tool. That positioning keeps it out of the FDA's device pathways, but it also means the strongest evidence available about the product is adoption and recognition, not clinical outcomes data.
Two Stanford graduates and a hospital stay
Kabilah was founded by Sarah Raza and Muhammad Umar Nadeem, both Stanford computer science graduates who focused on artificial intelligence. Raza holds a Stanford BS and MS in computer science, was a 2022 Mayfield Fellow, the second hire at the developer tools company EngFlow, and previously founded a nationwide nonprofit called AWARE, according to the company's Y Combinator page. Nadeem holds a Stanford BS in computer science and an MS in Management Science and Engineering and was a 2023 Mayfield Fellow.
Nadeem is described on the Y Combinator page as a recent cancer survivor, and a March 2026 contributed piece in Becker's Hospital Review traces the company's origin to “an extended personal patient journey through cancer treatment at leading institutions,” involving multiple surgeries, aggressive chemotherapy and prolonged inpatient stays. That article says the experience is what convinced the founders that nurses navigate dense information environments without tools built around how they actually work.
From Y Combinator to two pitch stages
Kabilah went through Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch. PitchBook records an accelerator investment dated February 1, 2024, and a seed round dated March 26, 2024, with Y Combinator and Pioneer Fund listed as investors; Tracxn separately estimates total funding at $500,000. Neither source points to an SEC filing, and a search of the SEC's EDGAR full text index for the word “Kabilah” returns zero results, so no Form D appears to have been filed under the company's name.
The company then spent 2025 on the healthcare conference circuit. It was named a finalist in HIMSS's Emerge Innovation Experience contest in January 2025 and a finalist in ViVE's Startup Pitch Competition the following month. More than a year later, in March 2026, Becker's Hospital Review ran a contributed piece on the company's return on investment argument, which is the most substantial independent press mention found to date.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Regulatory and clinical record | No FDA 510(k) or PMA filing, no registered clinical trial, no NIH or NSF award, and no PubMed indexed paper found under Kabilah as of September 25, 2026. | Not found |
| SEC Form D | EDGAR full text search for “Kabilah” across all forms, and again restricted to Form D, returns zero hits as of September 25, 2026. | Public record |
| Funding disclosed | PitchBook lists an accelerator investment dated Feb 1, 2024 and a seed round dated Mar 26, 2024, investors Y Combinator and Pioneer Fund. Tracxn separately estimates $500K total funding in one round. Neither cites an SEC filing. | Data aggregator |
| Y Combinator status | Company page lists batch W24 (Winter 2024), status Active, and two open Founding Engineer roles based in New York, NY as of Sep 25, 2026. | YC data |
| Leadership titles | The company's 2026 Y Combinator jobs page lists Umar Nadeem as CEO and Sarah Raza as CTO. Tracxn's team listing lists Sarah Raza as Co-Founder and CEO and Muhammad Umar Nadeem as Co-Founder with no title given. | Differs between sources |
| Headquarters | The company's 2026 Y Combinator job postings list New York, NY. PitchBook and Tracxn, both drawing on the company's 2024 founding profile, list Stanford, CA. | Differs between sources |
| Named customers | No hospital, health system or nursing school is named as a customer anywhere in the record. The 2024 launch post says the founders were “signing on our next two healthcare systems.” The March 2026 Becker's piece quotes a health system's chief nursing informatics officer but does not name her employer as a Kabilah customer. | Not found |
| Recognition | Finalist, HIMSS 2025 Emerge Innovation Experience (announced Jan 23, 2025) and finalist, ViVE 2025 Startup Pitch Competition (announced Feb 7, 2025), both self announced on the company's own blog. | Company-stated |
Read plainly: the funding and recognition trail is real but small, and it comes almost entirely from the company itself, from Y Combinator's own listing, or from data aggregators whose numbers do not trace back to a public filing. The two sources that disagree on the CEO title and on the headquarters city are a reminder that aggregator profiles can lag a company's own current listings by a year or more. No customer has been named, and no clinical or regulatory record exists to independently test the product's claims.
What to watch
- Whether Kabilah names a hospital, health system or nursing school as a live customer.
- A first SEC Form D, or public confirmation that the company has raised only through Y Combinator and one other investor.
- Resolution of which founder holds the CEO title, since the company's own current YC listing and a third party profile disagree.
- Any move beyond documentation and handoff into a claim that would require FDA involvement.
In their words
“As AI adoption accelerates, an important distinction is emerging: nursing AI must do more than simplify or speed up documentation to produce meaningful return on investment.”
Gretchen Brown, MSN, RN, CNIO, Stanford Health Care, quoted in Becker's Hospital Review, March 2026 · Independent
“Documentation efficiency alone rarely moves quality metrics or length of stay at scale. Sustainable return comes when AI improves care delivery through strengthening handoffs, surfacing risk earlier, and stabilizing unit operations.”
Gretchen Brown, MSN, RN, CNIO, Stanford Health Care, quoted in Becker's Hospital Review, March 2026 · Independent
“This perpetual cycle leads to increased medical errors, increased patient length of stay, and redundant inter-clinician messaging.”
Kabilah, Y Combinator company launch page, 2024 · Company-stated
“We're signing on our next two healthcare systems.”
Kabilah founders, Y Combinator company launch page, 2024 · Company-stated
“Every superhero needs their sidekick, and nurses have Kabilah.”
Kabilah, ViVE 2025 finalist announcement, February 7, 2025 · Company-stated
“Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare system, and their well-being and efficiency are essential to delivering quality care.”
Kabilah, HIMSS 2025 finalist announcement, January 23, 2025 · Company-stated
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search for “Kabilah,” all forms and Form D
- YC dataKabilah company page
- YC dataJobs at Kabilah, with founder titles and location
- Data aggregatorKabilah company profile
- Data aggregatorKabilah company profile and funding
- IndependentKabilah's AI Approach to Reducing Medical Errors
- IndependentBeyond Documentation: How Kabilah Is Redefining ROI for Nursing AI
- CompanyLaunch YC: Kabilah, Simplifying patient handoff for inpatient nurses
- CompanyKabilah for Nurses, homepage
- CompanyFinalists @ HIMSS 2025
- CompanyFinalists @ ViVE 2025
- IndependentMayfield Fellows Program
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
