Thousands of Open Enrollment questions reveal that misunderstandings about HSAs, FSAs, eligibility rules, and leave policies still shape many employees’ decisions. These gaps in understanding can lead to avoidable costs, unnecessary support volume, and benefits that don’t get used as intended—especially in self-funded environments where small decisions influence overall spend. This post breaks down the most common areas of confusion and shows how Avante’s AI benefits concierge, Carly, gives HR teams real-time visibility and guidance to help employees make clearer, more confident choices year-round.

As open enrollment gets underway across employers, we’re seeing new patterns emerge in how employees use AI to understand and choose their benefits. The data reveals a deeper kind of engagement: one that’s unfolding right now, as employees move beyond quick answers to real, personalized decision-making.

Employees aren’t just using Carly, our AI benefits assistant, to get transactional answers to tier-one questions like “What’s the deductible for the HDHP?” or “Tell me about the vision plans.” They’re using it to model scenarios that affect them personally.

Open enrollment should be a chance for employees to make confident choices about their benefits, yet for most organizations it remains a season of confusion, rising costs, and overwhelmed Benefits teams. With healthcare costs climbing at their fastest pace in more than a decade, AI is emerging as a powerful tool to ease the burden. From automating routine questions to surfacing real-time insights for leaders, this post explores how AI can transform open enrollment — and how Avante is bringing that vision to life.

Real Chemistry enhances its benefits strategy, saves time, and delivers a world-class employee experience with Avante’s AI benefits agent, Carly.

Avante recognized for delivering real-world results and reimagining benefits strategy with the first AI-native platform built for HR and finance leaders

Avante Launches the First AI-Native Benefits Intelligence Platform, Helping Employers Reduce their Second-Largest Expense

Avante is the AI-native platform that helps employers manage their second-largest line item – employee benefits – while delivering a personalized, engaging employee experience from hire to retire.

In conversations with HR and benefits leaders across industries, we often hear a common question: "Oh, so it’s like ChatGPT?" It's a fair question. The explosion of simple AI applications has created the impression that enterprise AI might be equally straightforward to implement - just add an API call to an LLM and you're done.

A benefits leader once told me, "I have no idea how many of my employees have cancer." It wasn't for lack of trying—the data was fragmented, reports were delayed, and insights remained unclear. Unfortunately, this is the reality for many benefits teams: they want to make data-driven decisions, but their available tools only hinder that goal.

Today marks a significant milestone as we officially announce Avante's emergence from stealth mode. After months of intense development and working closely with forward-thinking companies like Datavant, OneDigital, Real Chemistry, and Zscaler, we're ready to introduce the world to the first AI-native benefits intelligence platform.

Avante, a stealth Seattle-based startup, today announced it has raised $10 million in seed funding led by Bellevue WA-based FUSE, with participation from Ascend Venture Capital, Highsage and a group of strategic angel investors.