Axle Health Pivots to SaaS Model and Secures $10 Million Series A

When hospitals began struggling to meet the surging demand for at-home care, Adam Stansell recognized a familiar problem: the lack of a reliable logistics backbone. Having previously helped launch Uber Eats in the northeastern U.S. and later worked at Motive, a software firm optimizing trucking fleets, Stansell knew that delivery at scale wasn’t just about moving people or products but about orchestrating data, time, and trust.

In 2020, Stansell teamed up with cofounder Connor Hailey and a handful of former Uber colleagues to launch Axle Health, aiming to bring the same intelligence layer that powered gig economy logistics to the fragmented world of home healthcare. The result is a platform that now handles some of the most operationally challenging aspects of home-based care: clinician scheduling, route optimization, and patient engagement — all in real-time and powered by artificial intelligence.

This week, Axle Health announced a $10 million Series A round led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pear VC, and Lightbank. The capital injection marks a major milestone in the company’s evolution from a tech-enabled home health provider into a SaaS infrastructure play and signals growing investor confidence in AI-powered solutions for one of healthcare’s most complex domains.

From Provider to Platform

Axle Health originally set out to be a tech-first home health provider, joining Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 cohort and quickly scaling operations across all 50 states. At one point, the startup had built a multimillion-dollar services business, but in 2023, Stansell and his team made a decisive pivot: rather than owning delivery, Axle would power it.

“We realized it’s better for us and better for the industry if instead of keeping the technology for ourselves, we built tools to empower every home health provider,” said Stansell in an interview. The company shifted focus to licensing its proprietary logistics platform, enabling traditional agencies, health systems, and mobile providers to optimize care delivery without reinventing the wheel.

That bet appears to be paying off. According to Stansell, Axle’s revenue has grown tenfold in the past year. Its client base now includes independent home health agencies, large hospital networks, mobile phlebotomy companies, and acute care dispatch providers, all navigating the same operational bottlenecks: unpredictable traffic, fragmented patient data, clinician shortages, and rising demand.

Solving for Scale

Axle’s platform has an AI-driven logistics engine, a patent-pending system that synthesizes millions of real-time variables, from provider credentials and clinical eligibility to patient preferences and route constraints. It not only schedules visits, but also anticipates inefficiencies, offering optimized plans that clinicians can actually trust.

“Axle Health’s intelligent platform addresses the complex logistical challenges that have hindered the home healthcare industry for decades,” said Carl Byers, Partner at F-Prime Capital. “The team’s operational expertise — especially from their time at Uber, has allowed them to apply sophisticated logistics principles to healthcare.”

This operational sophistication is translating into measurable results. Customers report up to a 30% increase in overall clinician productivity and a 17% improvement in time spent on patient-facing care — a critical leap in an industry where clinicians spend more time on admin than bedside work.

Stansell doesn’t believe that technology alone will solve home healthcare’s labor crisis, but he’s convinced that better tools can widen its reach.

“With 11,000 Americans turning 65 every day and 87% preferring to age at home, this isn’t just a trend — it’s a demographic imperative,” he said. “But clinicians are stretched thin. Without efficiency, access suffers.”

Axle isn’t alone in chasing the home health opportunity. Competitors like Sprinter Health and DispatchHealth are also building out tech-enabled delivery models, though many are choosing to control the entire service layer. Sprinter recently raised $55 million to expand its preventive in-home care, while DispatchHealth merged with Medically Home in March to create an acute-care powerhouse.

But Axle is taking a different path, positioning itself as the connective tissue for the ecosystem rather than another node in the chain.

“You’re not going to have one provider that’s going to solve the whole thing,” Stansell said. “You need an ecosystem.” To that end, the company is doubling down on integrations — from electronic medical records to equipment suppliers and pharmacies and rolling out new patient engagement features, including AI-powered voice calls.

Julia McDowell, Venture Partner at F-Prime, said the return on investment for providers has been rapid and significant. “Caring for patients in the home with constrained clinical resources is a challenge I’ve seen firsthand. Axle unlocks financial and operational improvements almost immediately.”

From the Brink to Breakout

Axle’s current momentum follows a near existential crisis. Just two years ago, the company was facing less than 12 months of runway, a 76% revenue drop, and a hostile funding environment for digital health. “It wasn’t looking great,” Stansell admitted. But the team held on and rebuilt.

“Home health isn’t a nice-to-have anymore,” Stansell said. “It’s essential. And if we want to deliver it well, we need to build for efficiency from the ground up.”