French startup Parallel is tackling one of the healthcare sector’s most costly and time-consuming challenges: administrative inefficiency. The Paris-based company has just raised $3.5 million in seed funding to expand its team. Deploy its AI-powered automation tools in hospitals, and scale its product offering.
The funding round was led by Frst, with participation from Y Combinator, Bpifrance, Kima Ventures, Better Angle, and a number of strategic angel investors.
Administrative inefficiency is a growing concern in hospitals worldwide. In fact, it accounts for up to 25% of total healthcare spending. Largely driven by manual data entry, fragmented software systems, and a lack of effective automation tools.
Despite major investments in digital health, many hospitals still rely on outdated processes. Where staff are forced to toggle between multiple systems and input the same data repeatedly. Combined with worsening staff shortages and rising patient demand. The result is less time for patient care and more strain on already overstretched healthcare workers.
That’s where Parallel comes in. Founded in 2024 by Paul Lafforgue (ex-Meta, McKinsey) and Thomas Sohet (former CTO at Yago.be). The company is building vertical AI agents to handle repetitive administrative tasks, starting with medical coding.
Instead of requiring hospitals to rip out existing systems. Parallel’s generative AI tools are designed to work on top of current software, automating workflows without expensive integrations.
“Our AI agents can now interact with software like humans. Navigating screens, clicking buttons, and entering data efficiently and accurately,” said Paul Lafforgue, Co-Founder & CEO of Parallel. “In healthcare, where outdated systems and weak APIs have made automation hard, this technology finally bridges the gap.”
Parallel’s first solution targets medical coding, one of the most manual and error-prone tasks in hospital administration. Traditionally, this process involves reading clinical notes and converting them into standardized billing codes — a laborious task that slows down insurance reimbursement and opens the door to costly mistakes.
Parallel’s AI agent streamlines this entire process. It reads the clinical documentation, determines the appropriate codes, and enters them directly into hospital systems — cutting down time, reducing errors, and speeding up billing cycles.
According to Dr. Louis Rousselet, Head of Medical Information at GHICL, “Parallel’s AI brings a level of auditability and accuracy that simply doesn’t exist today. In just three months, they’ve built a solution that could significantly streamline coding workflows.”
Unlike generic automation platforms, Parallel’s AI tools are designed specifically for the healthcare sector, taking into account the complexities, compliance requirements, and legacy systems that make hospital administration such a challenge.
This sector-specific approach means hospitals can adopt Parallel’s technology without overhauling their IT infrastructure — a major factor in its growing appeal.
“Parallel is solving one of the most overlooked but critical problems in healthcare — admin overload,” said Pierre Entremont, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Frst. “Recent advances in AI make a step-change in efficiency possible. And because Parallel works with existing tools, it’s incredibly practical for hospitals.”
With this seed round, Parallel plans to grow its engineering team, accelerate hospital deployments, and build new AI agents to tackle other administrative pain points. By focusing on vertical use cases — like coding, billing, and data entry — the startup aims to free up healthcare professionals to do what they do best: care for patients.
In a system where administrative work has become a silent burden, Parallel’s mission is both timely and ambitious. Its AI-powered tools offer not just efficiency, but a path toward a more sustainable, patient-focused future for healthcare.
