AI-powered benefits platform Origin raises $30 million in fresh funding to bring CHROs visibility into benefits usage and spend

London-based startup Origin has successfully secured $30 million in new venture funding to advance its AI-powered platform designed for multinational companies to manage employee benefits more effectively.

This extended Series A+ funding round brings Origin's total capital raised over the past 12 months to more than $50 million, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company's innovative approach to benefits administration.

Notion Capital led the latest investment round, having also participated in Origin's initial Series A funding. Felix Capital, which spearheaded the earlier round, joins Acadian Ventures and all existing investors in this funding milestone. Additionally, Origin secured supplementary growth funding from HSBC Innovation Banking U.K. alongside the venture capital investment.

Experienced Leadership and Strategic Backing

Origin benefits from an impressive roster of angel investors, including Paul Daugherty, former chief technology and innovation officer of Accenture; Jacqui Canney, chief people and AI enablement officer at ServiceNow; and Tudor Havriliuc, who served as vice president of human resources at Meta from 2010 to 2022.

While the company has not disclosed its current valuation, executives confirmed it represents an increase from their initial Series A valuation.

The company was founded by Chris Bruce and Pete Craghill, the experienced leadership team behind Darwin (formerly Thomsons Online Benefits), a benefits technology company that Mercer acquired in 2016. At the time of acquisition, Darwin commanded an 80% market share in the non-U.S. global benefits administration sector, according to Bruce.

Addressing a Critical Enterprise Challenge

The inspiration for Origin emerged from conversations between Bruce and Craghill in summer 2023, when they recognized how advances in artificial intelligence and large language models could finally solve a persistent challenge they had encountered 15 years earlier: providing large organizations with comprehensive visibility into their global employee benefits spending.

"It simply was not possible without AI," Bruce explained, highlighting the technological breakthrough that made Origin's solution viable.

Benefits typically represent the second-largest expense for most organizations, yet companies often lack clear visibility into their actual spending. Bruce shared an example of one client's chief financial officer who estimated the company's benefits expenditure at approximately $750 million but had no reliable method to verify this figure. The executive expressed frustration, noting complete visibility across all budget lines except benefits.

The fundamental challenge, according to Craghill, stems from the fragmented nature of benefits data in multinational organizations. Information is scattered across PDFs, insurance policies, vendor platforms, and local documents in multiple languages. "You had all this unstructured data around the world, and there was no solution to it," Craghill noted. "It was always a human problem." Origin invested its first 18 months in solving the complex data ingestion challenge, developing methods to assess the quality and completeness of highly inconsistent source materials.

The Cuido Platform: Transforming Benefits Management

Origin's solution centers on its platform powered by Cuido, an AI engine that ingests and structures fragmented benefits data from policies, contracts, renewals, broker reports, and vendor platforms into a unified, searchable system. This comprehensive approach enables HR executives to track benefit spending and usage while managing renewals, policy reviews, and governance workflows efficiently.

The platform also empowers employees to query their available benefits directly. In multinational organizations with complex benefit structures across different regions, obtaining answers to basic benefits questions traditionally required days. Origin's platform delivers these answers in minutes.

Beyond employee convenience, the platform's primary value lies in helping companies optimize their benefits spending by identifying duplication and enabling provider consolidation, according to Bruce. The client who initially estimated $750 million in annual benefits spending now expects to achieve approximately $75 million in savings using Origin's platform. Another client successfully consolidated 13 local insurance policies into a single regional plan, realizing a 20% cost reduction.

Strategic Partnership Approach

Origin developed its Cuido platform through collaborative partnerships with major multinational employers who serve as anchor customers, including Pfizer, Comcast, and BP. Bruce described the company's strategic approach: two years ago, Origin approached 11 major multinationals, shared their vision, and invited them to participate as paying co-creators. Seven organizations committed to the partnership. Notably, a large technology company that initially declined to build an internal solution ultimately joined Origin after abandoning their internal development effort ten months later.

Growth Strategy and Market Expansion

With approximately 75 employees, Origin maintains go-to-market teams across the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe. The company employs a value-based pricing model that reflects client organization complexity, including the number of countries where they operate.

The new funding will support deeper integrations with existing human capital management platforms, including solutions from Workday and Oracle's Peoplesoft, ensuring benefits information is accessible within employees' existing work environments. Additionally, Origin plans to expand its partner capabilities for brokers, consultants, and insurance providers, strengthening its ecosystem approach to benefits management.