Exclusive: AI Platform Origin Secures $30M to Boost CHROs’ Benefits Insights

The Rise of Origin: A New Era in Employee Benefits Management

Origin, a London-based startup, has made waves in the corporate world by developing an AI-powered platform designed to help multinational companies manage their employee benefits. Recently, the company secured $30 million in new venture capital funding, marking what it calls an extended Series A+ round. This investment brings the total amount raised by Origin in the past 12 months to over $50 million.

The latest funding round was led by Notion Capital, which had previously participated in Origin’s initial Series A. Other key players include Felix Capital, Acadian Ventures, and all existing investors. Additionally, Origin announced that it has secured “additional growth funding” from HSBC Innovation Banking U.K., alongside the new venture capital round.

A Strong Lineup of Investors

Origin’s angel investors include notable figures such as Paul Daugherty, former chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture; Jacqui Canney, chief people and AI enablement officer at ServiceNow; and Tudor Havriliuc, former vice president of human resources at Meta, who held the role from 2010 to 2022.

Although the company did not disclose its valuation following the latest funding, it mentioned that the valuation is higher than after its initial Series A.

Founders with a Vision

Origin was founded by Chris Bruce and Pete Craghill, the same leadership team behind Darwin, a benefits technology software company that was originally called Thomsons Online Benefits. Darwin was acquired by Mercer in 2016 and held an 80% market share of the non-U.S. global benefits administration market at the time of its acquisition.

Bruce shared that the idea for Origin came from a discussion he had with Craghill in the summer of 2023. They observed how advances in AI and large language models could now address a problem they had tried and failed to solve 15 years earlier: providing big companies with a clear picture of their global employee benefits spending.

The Problem with Benefits Management

For most organizations, benefits are their second-largest cost, yet they often lack visibility into what they are spending. Bruce recounted a conversation with a client’s CFO who believed the company was spending roughly $750 million on benefits but had no way to verify that figure. “I’ve got visibility on every budget line in the organization, with the exception of benefits,” the CFO said.

Craghill pointed out that the root of the problem lies in the scattered nature of benefits data across PDFs, insurance policies, vendor platforms, and local documents in dozens of languages. “You had all this unstructured data around the world, and there was no solution to it,” Craghill said. “It was always a human problem.”

The Solution: Origin’s Platform

Origin spent its first 18 months focused on solving the data ingestion challenge, learning how to assess the quality and completeness of wildly inconsistent source materials. The company’s platform, powered by an AI engine called Cuido, ingests and structures fragmented data—from policies, contracts, renewals, broker reports, and vendor platforms—into a single, queryable system of record.

HR executives can use the platform to track benefit spending and usage, as well as handle renewals, policy reviews, and governance workflows. Employees can also query the platform to ask questions about their available benefits, which can often take days to answer in multinational companies. Now, it takes just minutes.

Real-World Impact

While the platform is beneficial for employees, the real payoff for companies is that it helps rationalize benefits spending, reducing duplication or helping them consolidate providers. For example, a company whose CFO estimated spending $750 million annually on benefits now expects to save around $75 million using Origin’s platform. Another client consolidated 13 local insurance policies into a single regional plan, achieving a 20% cost saving.

Collaborative Development

Origin’s Cuido platform was co-created in partnership with several large multinational employers who serve as the company’s anchor customers, including Pfizer, Comcast, and BP. Bruce noted that the company approached 11 major multinationals two years ago, shared its vision, and asked them to sign on as paying co-creators. Seven of those 11 agreed. One large technology company initially declined but later joined after abandoning its own effort.

Expansion and Future Plans

Origin currently has about 75 employees and go-to-market teams in both the United States and the United Kingdom and Europe. The company uses a value-based pricing model tied to the complexity of a client’s organization, including the number of countries in which it operates.

The new funding will be used to deepen integrations into existing human capital management platforms, such as Workday and Oracle’s Peoplesoft, so benefits information is accessible where employees already work. It will also expand Origin’s partner capabilities for brokers, consultants, and insurers.

Industry Recognition

Andy Leaver, operating partner at Notion Capital, stated that his firm is doubling down on Origin due to the team’s speed and execution. “Benefits are one of the last major enterprise functions still left behind by the digitisation wave of the last 25 years,” Leaver said. “AI now makes it possible to build a true system of record and intelligence for benefits.”