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Google’s bet on an AI startup to streamline employee benefits quickly turned into a privacy firestorm on Wednesday. The company told staff they’d have to hand over personal data to healthcare startup Nayya to use their health benefits — a move that Nayya’s CEO says is rare among its partners.
Google’s initial data sharing requirements came from the Big Tech giant, not from the startup, Nayya’s CEO Sina Chehrazi shared with Business Insider. Nearly every other business Nayya works with allows its employees to opt in to sharing different pieces of their personal data as they see fit, he said.
“We haven’t really seen anything like this before. It’s usually, go in and get as much help as you need,” he said.
Founded in 2020, New York-based Nayya has raised over $130 million for its software that helps employees navigate their healthcare and financial benefits. Its backers include top HR management tech companies like Workday and ADP.
Google originally told US-based employees this month that they would need to give startup Nayya access to their personal data in order to access their health benefits, Business Insider reported Wednesday.
The announcement drew criticism from employees who worried about being forced to share private health data with a third-party company. Google’s initial guidance suggested that workers who declined wouldn’t be eligible for any health benefits.
Google updated its policy after BI’s Wednesday story to state that employees can elect not to share their data with Nayya without their benefits enrollment being affected. The company told BI for this story that employees can simply not opt in to using Nayya if they don’t want to share their data.
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As AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT spread like wildfire, employees are increasingly sharing sensitive company information with the tech, often without realizing it. At the same time, employers, including Big Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Google, are pushing employees to use AI in their day-to-day work — but sometimes mandating their usage at the cost of expanded data collection.
“The future of data is consent. We are only interested in helping the people who want the help, and only in the way that they’d like to get that help,” Chehrazi said.
The AI-powered health benefits play
Tech has been trying to provide better employee benefits navigation for years.
Nayya, like a number of its competitors, is now using AI to tailor benefits recommendations. Employees can give Nayya information about their health and lifestyle, and the startup will use that data to guide those employees to benefits they already have. The tech also keeps track of employees’ existing benefits usage, like how much of their deductible has been met.
Nayya says it currently provides benefits navigation tech to over 1,000 employers, from law firm Goodwin Procter to health system Bon Secours Mercy Health. Most of Nayya’s contracts are with employers’ systems of record, the benefits management software they already use, like Workday or ADP, Chehrazi said.
Nayya also contracts directly with some employers. While Google uses Workday to manage administrative tasks like payroll, it uses a different platform to manage its employee benefits called Benefitfocus, Chehrazi said. To connect to Benefitfocus, Nayya contracts directly with Google.
Google struck a direct contract this year with Nayya to help employees decide which benefits they should opt into during open enrollment, Nayya CEO Sina Chehrazi told BI. That integration leverages Nayya’s benefits decision support platform rather than the startup’s agentic AI.
More of Nayya’s tools will be rolled out to Google employees in future months, Chehrazi said, such as technology that helps employees save money by pre-filling and submitting reimbursement forms.
Nayya says it helps employees save money, including by leading them to fully-covered health services to avoid surprise bills. The return-on-investment for employers is less direct. In theory, employees who can take better advantage of their health benefits will be healthier on average, creating fewer large costs for their employers. Chehrazi said in the longer term, Nayya can show employers which benefits they’re paying for that employees aren’t using to help those employers cut unnecessary services.
Health benefits navigation has previously been an unforgiving market. Many health benefits navigators are once-public companies that have since gone private after struggling on the public markets, like Castlight Health, or decade-old startups, like Included Health.
Chehrazi thinks Nayya is blazing its own path in part because of its focus on seamlessly connecting disparate data sources. The startup has certainly also benefited from its deep partnership with Workday, which has “phenomenal distribution,” Chehrazi said.
He also sees fresh money-saving potential as Nayya’s AI tools offer to take action on behalf of employees, such as filing reimbursement forms.
“That’s the type of ROI that I don’t think some of the V1 or the V2 navigators were as focused on,” he said.
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