In European hospitals, every time a patient is discharged, it results in a significant amount of paperwork. The clinical details of the patient’s stay are transformed into standardized codes, specifically ICD classifications and procedure codes, which determine the hospital’s compensation. A trained medical information specialist often undertakes the task of navigating outdated software, extracting relevant records, selecting correct codes, and accurately entering them. This process is meticulous, influential, and predominantly manual.
Parallel, a Paris-based startup launched in 2024, is developing AI agents to manage this instead. On Thursday, the company revealed a $20 million Series A funding led by Index Ventures, following its $3.5 million seed round in April 2025.
The new funding aims to enhance the deployment of current coding agents, facilitate international growth, and support the creation of new agents for billing, admissions, and other hospital administrative tasks.
The company’s strategy is appealing. Unlike the lengthy and often unsuccessful process of deeply integrating with hospital software, which could take 12 to 24 months, Parallel’s agents work on top of existing systems, mimicking human interaction by reading screens, navigating interfaces, and entering data.
The company states that this enables a hospital to have the software operational in just a week. The claims regarding deployment speed and integration duration are based on Parallel’s materials and lack independent verification. However, the underlying strategy, which involves using computer-use agents operating at the UI layer instead of needing API access, is a recognized method in enterprise software applications.
Parallel focuses on the European market, where public healthcare systems usually operate on older infrastructures with limited integration points, providing a unique advantage. The initial focus is on medical coding, a particularly complex billing process in French public hospitals due to the PMSI coding framework. This reflects a strategic decision to begin with a high-value, challenging-to-automate workflow rather than taking a broad approach from the start.
Paul Lafforgue, co-founder and CEO, is a graduate of École polytechnique and HEC, and he previously worked at Meta and McKinsey. Christopher Rydahl, co-founder and CTO, was a co-founder of Hublo, a French healthcare staffing software firm that had raised €22 million by 2021, serving over 2,800 healthcare facilities.
The $20 million round was led by Index Ventures, along with previous investors Frst, Y Combinator, and Hexa. Angel investors include Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, and Felix Blossier and Quentin de Metz from Pennylane.
“The speed with which hospitals see the real impact of Parallel’s AI agents has been truly impressive,” said Julia Andre, Partner at Index Ventures. “AI agents present a huge opportunity for hospitals across the entire patient lifecycle, ensuring time and resources are invested where it matters the most.”
Parallel reports that its agents are already in use in several dozen public and private hospitals in France, although this has not been independently verified. Administrative costs of healthcare are estimated to be approximately 25–30% of total expenditure, driven by aging populations, increasing regulatory requirements, and outdated IT systems that complicate automation.
Parallel was formerly known as Kiosk Medical. It joined Y Combinator’s program in 2024, offering early validation and a US network beneficial for eventual international expansion, targeting markets in the Netherlands, Belgium, and other European countries with similar hospital administrative frameworks.
The company is expanding its team to support this growth, hiring additional engineering, clinical, and commercial staff. The clear goal is that a startup capable of making hospital paperwork faster and more cost-effective is one that every European healthcare system will urgently need.