Pharmacy automation startup Asepha AI says it’s ready to help drug dispensaries overcome their understaffing problems after closing on a $4 million seed funding round today.

The round was led by Glasswing Ventures and Core Innovation Capital and saw participation from the likes of Panache, RedBud, MGV and pre-seed investors Ripple Ventures and Front Row Ventures.

Asepha has developed an agentic artificial intelligence platform specifically for pharmacists to automate their business operations, reducing the time they need to spend on administrative work.

According to Asepha, it has a ripe market for its platform, because about 70% of pharmacies in the U.S. are currently struggling with staffing problems, and those workers they do have spend up to 90% of their time on admin work. With its interoperable AI agents, it provides those pharmacies with a comprehensive range of tools to carry out the grunt work normally done by humans.

For instance, it offers a prescription entry agent that utilizes optical character recognition technology to comprehend doctor’s handwritten prescriptions and enter them into a database system with 96% accuracy, eliminating the need for manual data entry. There’s also a call assistant agent that can automate up to 70% of calls placed to pharmacies, and a browser navigation agent that can assist with web tasks in real-time, helping to streamline administrative workflows.

Other tools include a review agent that helps to identify any drug therapy problems with patients and flags them for review, and a reconciliation agent that can automatically identify discrepancies and ensure accurate medication lists.

A key aspect of Asepha’s AI agent platform is that it can easily be integrated with existing computer systems via a simple application programming interface, getting around the traditional problems that occur when integrating new software in highly regulated industries.

Asepha says its platform can deliver a 32% reduction in manual labor costs within the first month of deployment, while pharmacists report being able to complete administrative tasks four times faster than the industry baseline.

One of the main reasons for this is that one of Asepha’s co-founders is a former pharmacist. Chief Executive Eunice Wu (pictured) is a doctor of pharmacy who worked at numerous hospitals and retail pharmacies across Canada prior to starting the company. She recalled that she was often consumed with manual tasks that pulled her away from serving patients, and that this experience inspired her to try and change that and give pharmacists more time to focus on the people they serve.

“This funding allows us to scale that vision and bring meaningful relief to an overstretched workforce,” Wu said. “Our products are moving the needle in one of healthcare’s most operationally complex environments, improving access for tens of millions of patients along the way.”

While Wu brings expertise in pharmacy operations, Asepha’s other co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Can Uncu possesses the AI expertise, having previously helped to design the MI300X graphics processing unit at Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The funding will enable Toronto-based Asepha to expand its go-to-market and engineering teams and fulfill its plans to open a second office in New York City, so it can more easily target U.S. customers.

Edwin Loredo of Core Innovation Capital said Asepha interested him because of the highly verticalized and use-case specific nature of its AI agents, in stark contrast to the general-purpose agents developed by other startups. He also believes that its goals align perfectly with macro and demographic trends.

“In Asepha’s case, it’s helping to fill the massive supply-demand gap in pharmacy labor,” Loredo explained. “That alignment not only creates real urgency but also makes the go-to-market motion far more natural.”

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