Hike Medical raises $22.5M to put AI agents inside an orthotics factory

Why it matters

Hike is testing whether healthcare AI creates more value when it controls the physical supply chain too. Success would give Bhanti a route from orthotics into a much larger device market.

Hike Medical co-founder and CEO Aadi Bhanti raised $22.5 million in combined seed and Series A funding to automate the paperwork, clinical work and manufacturing behind orthotics, prosthetics and durable medical equipment.

The financing, announced Tuesday through Business Wire, was led by Max Altman's Saga Ventures. Indicator Ventures, Fifth Down Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Rosecliff Ventures and Orthofeet participated, alongside Monaco CEO Sam Blond and former New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo. Hike will use the capital to hire engineers and sales staff in San Francisco and expand manufacturing in Peoria, Illinois. The valuation was not disclosed.

Bhanti grew up inside the industry he is trying to rebuild. His grandfather made orthotics by hand in India. His father and Hike co-founder, Amit Bhanti, built Comprehensive Prosthetics & Orthotics, an Illinois-based clinical operator. Aadi Bhanti has described Hike as the third generation of that family project, replacing hand fabrication and fragmented administrative work with AI, mobile scanning and additive manufacturing. (Business Wire)

That history gives Hike a more credible starting point than the usual healthcare automation pitch. Bhanti has spent his life around clinicians who must collect referrals, satisfy payer rules, measure patients, place orders and wait for outside laboratories to fabricate devices. Hike is building one system to handle those steps and manufacture the resulting product.

From a phone scan to a finished device

Hike began with custom foot orthotics. A clinician can use a smartphone to capture a three-dimensional model of a patient's foot, complete the clinical documentation and order a device without using foam impression boxes or dedicated scanners. Hike then prints the orthotic at its Peoria operation and ships it to the clinic. Hike says devices leave the facility in about five business days. (Hike Medical)

The new platform extends in both directions from that original manufacturing workflow. Hike Intelligence processes referral documents, checks insurance eligibility and identifies missing records or signatures. Hike Clinical guides the evaluation, produces clinical notes and collects the information required to order a device. Hike Lab handles fabrication and fulfillment.

The combination matters because administrative automation alone leaves the physical bottleneck untouched. A faster insurance approval provides limited relief if measurements still move between disconnected systems and an outside laboratory takes weeks to produce the device. Hike's wager is that owning the workflow and the factory gives its software more control over cost, speed and quality than a vendor selling another layer into an old process. (Hike Medical)

Hike says its process reduced remake rates from roughly one in 15 devices to one in 400. Hike has not published the underlying sample or methodology in the financing announcement. (Business Wire)

Saga backs the factory as well as the software

Saga's lead investment fits the part of Hike that is easiest to underestimate. Hike has AI agents, yet Bhanti is building a vertically integrated medical-device operator rather than a software subscription attached to somebody else's supply chain.

Saga's investment puts Hike closer to an operating business rebuilt around software than a conventional healthcare SaaS vendor. It also requires substantially more execution: Hike must develop reliable automation, maintain compliant clinical workflows and run physical manufacturing at the same time.

The investor group brings several relevant connections. Indicator Ventures already backs healthcare and vertical AI businesses. Orthofeet, an orthopedic footwear brand, joined as both a strategic investor and commercial partner, giving Hike a relationship with an established seller of shoes and insoles rather than another financial backer alone.

Hike also hired Jerry Tang as chief operating officer during 2026. Tang previously worked in operations at Flexport and later at digital dental-lab operator Dandy. His recruitment points to the operational problem Bhanti is preparing to confront: moving from a successful custom-insole workflow into a broader catalog of regulated, patient-specific devices. (Business Wire)

Hike faces established software providers as it expands. Parachute Health digitizes DME ordering across clinicians, suppliers and payers, while Brightree provides software spanning intake, documentation, inventory, delivery and billing. Hike's distinction is its effort to connect those administrative functions with mobile clinical scanning and manufacturing under one operator.

Insoles are Bhanti's entry point

Bhanti's ambitions reach beyond making orthotics arrive faster. In a March 2026 essay, he described insoles as Hike's entry into the wider DME market, followed eventually by powered assistive devices and consumer bionics. He argues that the scanning, manufacturing, reimbursement and clinical infrastructure built for today's devices could support more advanced products later. (Bionics 2040)

The immediate challenge is narrower and difficult enough. Referrals still arrive by fax. Payer requirements differ by device and patient. Clinical records must support reimbursement. A poorly fitted product may have to be remade, adding cost and delaying care. Hike must show that its automation can manage that variation while its factory delivers consistent devices.

The funding announcement combines Hike's seed and Series A without separating the size or timing of each tranche. A separate 2025 seed round of approximately $7 million has been reported in public databases, but the available material does not establish whether that amount is included in the new $22.5 million total or was raised in addition to it. The clearer measure will be what the $22.5 million produces: more device categories, greater manufacturing capacity and evidence that Bhanti's integrated model works beyond custom insoles.

For Bhanti, the factory is not an awkward physical appendage to an AI pitch. It is the point. His family spent three generations fitting devices to bodies; Hike is betting that software becomes most useful when it remains accountable for the object that reaches the patient.