As of Thursday, Olive AI Inc.'s website redirects to Waystar Technologies Inc., one of two companies that bought pieces of the shuttered Columbus unicorn.
The other is Humata Health, a startup being formed by the founder of a tech company that Columbus-based Olive had acquired for $120 million nearly three years ago. Terms of the new deal, essentially reversing that acquisition, were not disclosed.
Dr. Jeremy Friese is creating Humata to acquire Olive's product line for automation of insurance prior authorizations, according three employees whose jobs were cut in the Oct. 31 shutdown. The three asked not to be named, but independently identified Friese in recounting Olive CEO Sean Lane's verbal description of the deal in an all-staff meeting.
A Humata Health LLC was registered in the state of Delaware in February, but the founder and operating address were not disclosed.
Friese had co-founded Minneapolis-based prior authorization startup Verata Health in 2017 and joined Olive as president of payer market in the deal at the end of 2020. The former Mayo Clinic physician executive lived in Orlando, Florida, and told the Orlando Business Journal he would grow Olive's office there.
He later left operations. Friese did not respond to a LinkedIn message seeking comment.
Dr. YiDing Yu, Verata's co-founder, stayed with Olive as chief medical officer. With her bio listed as "serial entrepreneur," Yu was slated to speak at a panel discussion Thursday in a summit of the Massachusetts chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Yu did not respond to a LinkedIn direct message; a message was left with the organization hosting the conference.
The online publication Axios was first to report the Verata-Humata connection.
What are Waystar's plans?
Waystar, based in Louisville, Kentucky, filed its registration statement for an IPO two weeks ago. Now it's in a "quiet period" required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company made a statement about acquiring "Olive’s clearinghouse and patient access solutions" on LinkedIn, but did not issue a press release. Olive's statement on the sale and shutdown described the unit as its revenue cycle business, which provides an electronic data clearinghouse for hospital billing departments and determines insurance eligibility.
"We look forward to offering a market-leading client experience and access to the Waystar platform so that, together, we can simplify healthcare payments," the statement said.
CEO Matt Hawkins in the statement said the company would welcome new employees and clients in the transition. The company did not say how many Olive employees would transfer.
Waystar was created in 2017 with the merger of tech companies from Kentucky and Georgia, and was valued at $2.7 billion in 2019, when Sweden-based EQT Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bought a majority stake in the company, Louisville Business First reported. The company plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq under the symbol "WAY."
The Olive unit will be Waystar's ninth acquisition since 2018, our Louisville sister publication reported. It has 1,400 employees.
Olive, which made machine learning software to automate hospital administrative tasks, raised a cumulative $857 million in venture capital in its decade in business.
About half of that came in a July 2021 round raising $400 million at a valuation of $4 billion, both Ohio records. It had first attained unicorn status eight months earlier, valued at $1.5 billion.
The company's downtown office was empty mid-Thursday afternoon.
