Cedar

Cedar is a New York-based healthcare financial engagement platform, founded in 2016 by Florian Otto and Arel Lidow, that helps hospitals, health systems, and medical groups simplify patient billing and payment. The company's software powers pre-visit and post-visit billing communications, payment processing, financing options, and Medicaid enrollment support, aiming to make healthcare costs more transparent and affordable for patients. Cedar's 2021 acquisition of OODA Health, a rival healthcare billing technology company, combined provider- and payer-side billing data onto one platform.

Since 2025, Cedar has layered agentic AI onto its billing platform through Kora, a voice and text AI agent that explains charges, verifies insurance, and resolves billing questions directly with patients. By mid-2026 Kora had handled hundreds of thousands of patient calls across ten provider organizations, and Cedar expanded the product into a broader Kora Platform spanning inbound and outbound voice, two-way texting, and integration with hospital contact centers and electronic health record systems.