SpendRule raises $2M to automate hospital spending audits

On Tuesday, SpendRule emerged from stealth—operating a company without public announcement—with $2 million in funding. The round was led by Abundant Venture Partners, with participation from MemorialCare Innovation Fund and Zeal Capital Partners. Launched last summer, SpendRule is an AI-powered platform that helps healthcare systems track their spending. The platform specifically targets purchases and contracts that lack barcodes or easily identifiable purchase receipts, such as maintenance, janitorial, laundry, or translation services.

For items that have barcodes, healthcare systems use a “three-way match,” an accounting process connecting a purchase to an invoice. However, purchases and contracts that lack barcodes are often tricky and complex to manage, which can lead to overspending. Typically, hospitals hire an auditor every two years to perform invoice reviews or manually review each invoice. SpendRule automates this process by integrating with a hospital system’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, contract management software, and accounts payable workflows. The technology pulls data from contracts, invoices, internal databases, and vendor data to validate invoices before payment is released, flagging discrepancies to show teams when to pay.

The company was founded by Chris Heckler and Joseph Akintolayo. Heckler, a founder, was previously angel investing while coming to the end of a five-year non-compete agreement after selling his last healthcare startup. Akintolayo, the CTO and founder, had also recently sold his fintech company. Despite launching only last summer, the founders closed the initial funding round by Halloween. SpendRule is already working with healthcare systems including Kettering Health, MemorialCare, and MUSC Health. “Our goal is to build a more resilient hospital system,” Akintolayo said.

According to Heckler, SpendRule considers existing invoice auditors, such as SpendMend and GHX, to be its competition. However, Akintolayo noted that SpendRule differentiates itself by focusing specifically on purchased services that do not have barcodes. The startup will use the new capital to grow its team to support its customers and to continue developing its AI infrastructure.

Why it matters

SpendRule addresses a specific, high-friction inefficiency in healthcare finance: the manual auditing of non-standardized service contracts. By applying AI to these “invisible” expenses, the company aims to reduce systemic overspending in hospital operations.