Verified
Elevance Health
Scaling- Health insurance
- ~97,100 employees
- $1B+ digital and AI investment
- Spark, built in-house
- 60,000+ associates using AI tools
Elevance Health deploys AI through Spark, an internal chatbot built on multiple large language models that more than 60,000 associates use, an enterprise ChatGPT license, and AI inside member service, prior authorization, call centers and payment integrity. Chief Digital and Information Officer Ratnakar Lavu owns AI and reports on it to the board. Gail Boudreaux said in Apr 2026 that Elevance Health is investing more than $1 billion in digital and AI-enabled capabilities; Elevance Health has published no dollar return from AI.
elevancehealth.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- Spark, a chatbot Elevance Health built in-house on multiple large language models for document analysis and common tasks, runs alongside an enterprise ChatGPT rollout (Feb 2026) and HealthOS, its clinical data exchange with care providers.
- The models
- Elevance Health has not named the models behind Spark; associates are getting an enterprise ChatGPT license from OpenAI, and Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb 2026 that Elevance Health also works with Anthropic, Google and AWS.
- The reach
- More than 60,000 of Elevance Health's roughly 97,100 employees use AI productivity tools (Oct 2025), and its Virtual Assistant was available to about 22 million commercial members in Dec 2025.
- The catch
- Elevance Health has published no dollar return on AI; CFO Mark Kaye said in Sep 2026 that returns will arrive in stages, with the larger financial gains coming once tools scale across the company.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~97,100
- Dec 31, 2025: 71,900 in the U.S. and 25,200 abroad, including part-time and temporary staff
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- Investing more than $1B in digital and AI-enabled capabilities (Apr 2026)
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- AI sits in the Digital Platforms and AI Office under Ratnakar Lavu
- Who owns AI
- Ratnakar Lavu, EVP and CDIO
- Leads the Digital Platforms and AI Office and the Responsible AI program; reports AI usage to the board
- Platform
- Spark, built in-house
- Internal chatbot on multiple LLMs; enterprise ChatGPT rolling out (Feb 2026)
- Models
- Multiple LLMs, OpenAI
- Spark's models unnamed; Anthropic, Google and AWS also named as collaborators (Feb 2026)
- Reach
- 60,000+ associates
- Use AI productivity tools (Oct 2025); about 22 million commercial members have access to the Virtual Assistant (Dec 2025)
- Use cases
- Count not disclosed
- Member service, prior authorization, call centers, payment integrity, cost management
Key findings
More than 60,000 Elevance Health associates, out of about 97,100 employees, use AI productivity tools (Oct 2025), and associates sent 10 million messages through Spark, the company's internally built chatbot, in the first half of 2025 (Fortune, Feb 2026).
Gail Boudreaux said on Apr 22, 2026 that Elevance Health is investing more than $1 billion in digital and AI-enabled capabilities, but Elevance Health has published no dollar return, and CFO Mark Kaye said on Sep 10, 2026 that returns will come in stages.
Elevance Health started a 2026 to 2027 Operating Model Transformation Program in the first quarter of 2026 to cut organizational layers, redesign workflows and expand its use of AI, and booked $147 million of program costs, mostly severance, staff moves and office closures, in the nine months to Sep 30, 2026.
Elevance Health's Virtual Assistant, a conversational AI tool in the Sydney Health app, was available to about 22 million commercial members in Dec 2025, with Medicare members planned for 2026.
Elevance Health uses AI to approve prior authorization requests faster but not to deny them: Ratnakar Lavu said in Jun 2026 that any request the AI cannot approve goes to a human, and Ashok Chennuru reported in Jun and Jul 2026 that HealthOS clinical data exchange cut denials for insufficient clinical information by 61% at the health systems using it.
Where Elevance sits
- Stage
- Scaling
Elevance Health sits at Scaling: more than 60,000 of its roughly 97,100 employees use AI productivity tools such as the in-house Spark chatbot, AI runs in production in member service, prior authorization, call centers and payment integrity, and EVP Ratnakar Lavu owns the Digital Platforms and AI Office and reports AI usage to the board. Elevance Health falls short of Embedded because it has published neither weekly usage nor any dollar return from AI, even as its 2026 to 2027 Operating Model Transformation Program removes layers, redesigns workflows and expands the use of AI.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- EVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer Ratnakar Lavu, an executive officer
- Platform
- Hybrid: Spark built in-house; enterprise ChatGPT license bought
- Models
- Multiple unnamed LLMs in Spark, plus OpenAI's ChatGPT
- Hosting
- Not disclosed; a single outside vendor can provide its data center, mainframe and multi-cloud services (2025 Form 10-K)
- Reach
- 60,000+ associates use AI tools (Oct 2025)
How they deploy
AI tied to cost and simplicity
Gail Boudreaux said on Apr 22, 2026 that Elevance Health treats AI as support for its strategy of making care more affordable and simpler, not as a separate technology or an experiment, and that it embeds AI first to reduce costs, then to simplify the experience and take administrative cost out. Ratnakar Lavu said in Jun 2026 that Elevance Health does not use AI for its own sake, only where it serves the company's goals.
Members, providers and associates
Ratnakar Lavu set out three priorities for Elevance Health's AI at AHIP in Jun 2026: a conversational assistant that answers members' coverage, cost and provider questions in the Sydney Health app; faster prior authorization approvals for care providers; and tools that put a member's administrative and clinical history in front of call center associates.
Build the assistant, buy the licenses
Elevance Health built Spark, an internal chatbot that uses multiple large language models, and is also deploying an enterprise ChatGPT license across the company (Fortune, Feb 2026). Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb 2026 that Elevance Health works with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, AWS and healthcare AI startups to help them understand healthcare workflows, policy and reimbursement.
Agents next, with a human overseeing them
Ratnakar Lavu told Fortune in Feb 2026 that agentic AI suits complex benefits and claims work, that Elevance Health had explored agent use cases across its three priorities and expected to scale them more aggressively in 2026, and that each agent should be trained only on the data its task needs, with a human overseeing several agents. Ashok Chennuru said in Jul 2026 that Elevance Health is building an interoperability framework with one large health system in which agents will exchange information between the two.
Operating model rebuilt around technology
Elevance Health's 2026 to 2027 Operating Model Transformation Program, begun in the first quarter of 2026, aims to simplify the organization and expand the use of AI across the company by removing layers, realigning roles, redesigning workflows, modernizing some IT platforms and making targeted workforce reductions (Form 10-Q, Oct 2026).
- Deployment model
- Elevance Health runs AI from a central Digital Platforms and AI Office led by EVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer Ratnakar Lavu, who also leads the Responsible AI program, while Ashok Chennuru, Chief Data and Digital Transformation Officer, leads company-wide efforts to apply data and AI to claims, personalization, fraud and waste, and the workforce. Elevance Health deploys the tools in its two businesses: Health Benefits, consolidated under Felicia Norwood in Feb 2026, and Carelon, whose Carelon Insights unit runs payment integrity, analytics and HealthOS (2025 Form 10-K). An Enterprise Data and AI Governance Council of about 20 managers oversees AI policy, and Lavu reports on AI usage to the board with input from Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer Kyle Weber.
- Model providers
- Elevance Health does not name the models behind its own tools. Spark, its internally developed chatbot, uses multiple large language models (Fortune, Feb 2026). Elevance Health announced a collaboration with OpenAI in Sep 2025 for AI fluency certifications and is deploying an enterprise ChatGPT license across the company. Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb 2026 that Elevance Health also works with Anthropic, Google and AWS, framing those relationships as helping the companies understand healthcare, and Elevance Health has not said whether it runs their models.
- Data and infrastructure
- Elevance Health has not said where its AI models run or named its cloud providers. Its 2025 Form 10-K says a single outside vendor can provide its data center, mainframe, storage, database and multi-cloud management services, and Ashok Chennuru oversees enterprise data management and cloud data infrastructure (Mar 2026). HealthOS, which Carelon Insights runs, exchanges clinical data among care providers, electronic medical records and Elevance Health's plans; more than 91,000 providers were connected in Mar 2026, and Total Member View, built on HealthOS, combines medical records and admission, discharge and transfer data with claims, pharmacy, behavioral and social data. Elevance Health also connects with more than 150 Epic systems and uses Epic's Payer Platform for near-real-time inpatient review (Jul 2026).
Platforms and internal tools
SparkBy 2025
Spark is Elevance Health's internally developed AI chatbot, which uses multiple large language models to handle document analysis and other common corporate tasks for associates. Associates sent 10 million messages through Spark in the first half of 2025.
- Users
- More than 60,000 associates (Fortune, Feb 2026)
- Models
- Multiple large language models, not named
Enterprise ChatGPT licenseRolling out in 2026
Elevance Health was in the process of deploying an enterprise ChatGPT license across the company in Feb 2026, alongside AI fluency certifications for associates through OpenAI Certifications announced in Sep 2025.
- Models
- OpenAI
Virtual Assistant in Sydney Health2025
Virtual Assistant is a conversational AI tool in the Sydney Health app and on Elevance Health-affiliated plan websites that answers plain-language questions about coverage, costs, claims and bills, lists in-network providers with cost estimates, supports Spanish and connects to Elevance Health's Find Care search. Elevance Health said nearly 9 in 10 pilot users found answers with it.
- Users
- Available to about 22 million commercial members (Dec 2025); Medicare members planned for 2026
HealthOS and Total Member View
HealthOS is Elevance Health's clinical data exchange platform, run by Carelon Insights, that connects care providers, electronic medical records and Elevance Health's plans and supports prior authorization. Total Member View, built on HealthOS, combines medical records, admission and discharge data, claims, pharmacy, behavioral and social data, and Elevance Health uses AI summarization to pull relevant content from large medical record submissions (Jul 2026).
- Users
- 91,000+ providers connected (Mar 2026); about 100,000 providers log into Total Member View daily and 3,000+ care management staff use it (Jul 2026)
Call center associate tools
Elevance Health gives call center associates AI tools that suggest next actions during a call, answer claim questions through a chat interface in real time, write post-call wrap-up summaries and analyze the sentiment of calls and chats (Dec 2025). Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb 2026 that AI generates wrap-ups across roughly a million interactions a month.
Vendors and partners
OpenAISep 2025
Enterprise ChatGPT license for associates and AI fluency certifications · Elevance Health announced AI certifications through OpenAI Certifications on Sep 18, 2025, and Gail Boudreaux called it a partnership on the Oct 21, 2025 earnings call.
Anthropic
AI company Elevance Health works with · Ratnakar Lavu named Anthropic in Feb 2026 among the AI companies Elevance Health helps to understand healthcare workflows; Elevance Health has not said whether it uses Anthropic's models.
Google
AI company Elevance Health works with · Ratnakar Lavu named Google in Feb 2026 among the AI companies Elevance Health works with; no product or contract has been disclosed.
Amazon Web Services
AI company Elevance Health works with · Ratnakar Lavu named AWS in Feb 2026 among the AI companies Elevance Health works with; Elevance Health has not said whether AWS hosts any of its AI workloads.
Epic
Payer Platform for near-real-time inpatient review and clinical data exchange · Ashok Chennuru said in Jul 2026 that Elevance Health has worked with Epic for almost eight years, connects with more than 150 Epic systems and sent 2.6 million ID cards with coverage information to care providers and members in six months. An Epic vice president was quoted in Elevance Health's Jun 2026 HealthOS release.
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
Central Digital Platforms and AI Office under an executive officer; delivery inside Health Benefits and Carelon
Elevance Health's AI owner is Ratnakar Lavu, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer since Feb 2024, who leads the Digital Platforms and AI Office and the Responsible AI program and is listed among the company's executive officers. A Feb 26, 2026 announcement consolidated the Health Benefits businesses under Felicia Norwood and gave CFO Mark Kaye oversight of Carelon as Peter Haytaian left the Carelon president role effective May 4, 2026. A Mar 31, 2026 announcement made Will Feest president of Carelon Insights, and on Oct 21, 2026 Elevance Health named Jeff Park President of Carelon, effective Dec 1, 2026.
Elevance Health does not publish how many people work on AI, data science or technology. AI work sits in the Digital Platforms and AI Office under Ratnakar Lavu, in Ashok Chennuru's data and digital transformation group, and inside the businesses, including Carelon Insights, which runs payment integrity, analytics and HealthOS. Elevance Health had about 97,100 employees at Dec 31, 2025, 25,200 of them outside the U.S., and more than 60,000 associates used AI productivity tools in Oct 2025.
Reporting lines
President and CEO
Digital Platforms and AI Office
Ratnakar Lavu, EVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer
Leads the Responsible AI program; the line to the CEO is inferred from Lavu's executive officer listing, not published
Chief Data and Digital Transformation Office
Chennuru sits in the Digital Platforms and AI Office (Mar 2026); his direct manager is not published
Enterprise Data and AI Governance Council
About 20 managers, meets quarterly, accountable to the executive leadership team (2026 proxy)
Health Benefits
Felicia Norwood, EVP and Chief Health Benefits Officer
Consolidated commercial and government plans and core operating functions (Feb 2026)
Commercial and Specialty Health Benefits
Morgan Kendrick, EVP and President
Line inferred from the Feb 2026 consolidation, not published
Finance and Carelon oversight
Mark Kaye, EVP and CFO
Carelon
Jeff Park, President from Dec 1, 2026
Park named Oct 21, 2026; line to Kaye inferred from the Feb 2026 announcement
Carelon Insights
Will Feest, President and Carelon COO
Payment integrity, clinical data exchange through HealthOS, analytics and global business process support
Human Resources
Ryan Craig, EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer
Runs AI fluency training and the Enterprise Skills Academy
Elevance Health does not publish an org chart below its executive officers. The 2025 Form 10-K says the Responsible AI program is led by the Chief Digital and Information Officer, and the 2026 proxy says that officer reports to the board on AI usage with input from the Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer, while the Audit Committee reviews AI-related privacy and data security matters. Elevance Health uses two titles for Ratnakar Lavu: Chief Digital and Information Officer in the 10-K and Chief Digital Information Officer in the proxy and on its website. Ashok Chennuru's title also varies: Chief Data and Digital Transformation Officer in Elevance Health's Jun 2026 release, and Chief Data and Digital AI Transformation Officer in a Mar 2026 HLTH listing.
Named people
Use cases
Elevance Health has not published a count of its AI use cases; the ones it names run in member service through the Sydney Health Virtual Assistant, provider matching and outreach, in prior authorization and HealthOS, in call centers, payment integrity and medical cost management, and in associate productivity through Spark and an enterprise ChatGPT license. Elevance Health reports operating results for some of them, such as fewer denials for missing information, but has credited no business-level return to AI for any named use case, and as of Oct 2026 had put no dollar figure on the return from its more than $1 billion digital and AI investment.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual Assistant Virtual Assistant answers members' plain-language questions about coverage, costs, claims and bills in the Sydney Health app and on plan websites, lists in-network providers with cost estimates and supports Spanish; nearly 9 in 10 pilot users found answers with it. | Member experience | In production | |
| Personalized provider matching Elevance Health's personalized provider matching in Sydney Health uses more than 500 data points to match members with high-performing providers, and Gail Boudreaux said in Apr 2026 that more than 20% of members had connected through it. | Member experience | In production | |
| AI-driven outreach for gaps in care An AI-driven outreach program picks members who could benefit from a timed, personalized reminder, such as a prescription refill or an annual wellness visit; Elevance Health's internal research found its 2024 texting outreach raised wellness visit, colorectal screening and blood sugar control rates. | Member experience | In production | |
| Prior authorization review An AI tool extracts and summarizes medical records and matches documentation to medical policy criteria so that prior authorization requests can be approved faster; any request the AI cannot approve goes to a human clinician. | Utilization management | In production | |
| HealthOS clinical data exchange HealthOS and Total Member View share clinical data with health systems and summarize large medical record submissions with AI; Elevance Health reported 61% fewer denials for insufficient clinical information and up to 51% fewer appeals and peer-to-peer reviews where the workflows run (Jul 2026). | Care provider experience | In production | |
| Provider onboarding, contracting and roster automation Gail Boudreaux said in Oct 2025 that HealthOS automates provider onboarding, contracting and roster management, and Mark Kaye listed roster automation among the technology investments planned for 2026. | Care provider experience | In production | |
| Call center associate tools Call center associates get AI that suggests next actions, answers claim questions in real time, drafts post-call summaries for review and analyzes call and chat sentiment; AI generates wrap-ups across roughly a million interactions a month (Feb 2026). | Customer service | In production | |
| Billing and utilization anomaly detection AI-enabled analytics help Elevance Health spot potentially inappropriate billing and utilization patterns earlier, including in Medicaid behavioral health services such as ABA therapy, so investigation teams can act sooner (Oct 2026). | Payment integrity | In production | |
| Early cost trend detection Analytics and AI-enabled tools help Elevance Health detect emerging medical cost drivers earlier and target clinical, network and payment integrity actions; Gail Boudreaux said some work that took months now takes days (Jul 2026). | Medical cost management | In production | |
| High-risk member identification Carelon uses AI and advanced analytics to identify high-risk members earlier and engage them through coordinated whole-person care in its risk-based programs. | Carelon | In production | |
| National account benefit updates and onboarding Gail Boudreaux said in Oct 2025 that Elevance Health's national account teams use AI to update benefits and onboard clients. | Commercial | In production | |
| Spark internal chatbot Spark gives Elevance Health associates a chatbot built on multiple large language models for document analysis and other common corporate tasks. | Firmwide | In production | |
| Enterprise ChatGPT license Elevance Health is deploying an enterprise ChatGPT license across the company, alongside AI fluency certifications for associates through OpenAI Certifications. | Firmwide | Pilot | |
| Agent-to-agent data exchange with a health system Elevance Health is working with one large health system on an interoperability framework in which AI agents will exchange information between the two organizations. | Care provider experience | Announced |
Adoption
Elevance Health spread AI in layers: predictive analytics in care management and payment integrity, generative AI in member and provider tools from 2024, an internal assistant for associates, and agents planned for 2026. More than 60,000 associates used AI productivity tools in Oct 2025, about three in five employees, and sent 10 million messages through Spark in the first half of 2025; Gail Boudreaux described the same 60,000 as having access in Apr 2026, and Elevance Health has not published weekly usage. On the member side, Elevance Health planned to give more than 10 million members its Virtual Assistant by the end of 2025 and reported about 22 million commercial members with access in Dec 2025; Boudreaux called those 22 million regular users in Apr 2026, a stronger claim than the company's release. Elevance Health tied 2025 executive bonuses partly to the adoption of AI tools.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
Jan 2024
Gail Boudreaux used a CES keynote to describe how Elevance Health uses generative AI to interpret member health data, explain benefits and simplify prior authorization, with humans kept in clinical decisions.
Feb 2024
Ratnakar Lavu joined Elevance Health from Nike as Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer.
Apr 2025
Elevance Health described an AI tool that summarizes medical records and matches them to medical policy criteria to speed prior authorization approvals.
Jun 2025
Associates sent 10 million messages through Spark, Elevance Health's internally built chatbot, in the first half of 2025.
Sep 2025
Elevance Health announced AI fluency certifications for associates through OpenAI Certifications and AI courses in its Enterprise Skills Academy.
Oct 2025
Elevance Health said more than 60,000 associates already use AI productivity tools, including tools that draft call notes for associates to review.
Oct 2025
Gail Boudreaux said Elevance Health embeds AI at scale, not as an experiment, and had just signed a partnership with OpenAI, while Mark Kaye planned several hundred million dollars of 2026 investment that includes AI in clinical workflows and roster automation.
Dec 2025
Elevance Health made its AI Virtual Assistant available to about 22 million members of affiliated commercial plans, with Medicare members planned for 2026.
Feb 2026
Ratnakar Lavu said Elevance Health was deploying an enterprise ChatGPT license across the company and expected to scale AI agents more aggressively in 2026.
Apr 2026
Elevance Health disclosed its 2026 to 2027 Operating Model Transformation Program to expand AI use and cut organizational layers, and Gail Boudreaux put the digital and AI investment at more than $1 billion.
Jul 2026
Ashok Chennuru reported early HealthOS results, connectivity with more than 150 Epic systems and plans for agents to exchange information with a large health system.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology and AI investment
Elevance Health does not disclose a technology budget. Gail Boudreaux said on Apr 22, 2026 that Elevance Health is investing more than $1 billion in digital and AI-enabled capabilities. Mark Kaye said in Oct 2025 that 2026 would carry several hundred million dollars of discrete investment, about $1 of earnings per share, in technology adoption, Carelon and quality, and in Jul 2026 that the 2026 outlook includes about $0.75 a share of ongoing investment for AI adoption, workforce enablement and Carelon, plus about $0.80 a share of one-time accelerated investment in the second half.
Operating expense
Elevance Health guided its 2026 adjusted operating expense ratio to 10.6%, plus or minus 50 basis points, while investing to embed AI-enabled and digital capabilities (Jan 2026). The ratio was 10.5% in the first quarter of 2026, 20 basis points better than a year earlier, and 11.3% in the third quarter, 90 basis points higher, which Elevance Health put down to one-time investments in member experience, medical cost management and Carelon.
Reported ROI
Elevance Health has not put a dollar figure on the return from AI. Mark Kaye said on Sep 10, 2026 that benefits should begin in the near term from earlier detection of cost trends, timelier cost-of-care actions and operating efficiency, and that the larger financial opportunity comes as the tools scale, improving both medical and administrative costs. Gail Boudreaux said on Oct 21, 2026 that Elevance Health's medical cost management platform had identified more than $300 million of anticipated savings in 2026; Elevance Health has not said how much of that has been realized or credited any of it to AI.
Workforce and productivity
Elevance Health's 2026 to 2027 Operating Model Transformation Program includes targeted workforce reductions and role realignments, and cost $147 million in the nine months to Sep 30, 2026, mostly for staff reductions and relocations, severance and office closures; Elevance Health has not said how many roles it affects. Elevance Health's 2025 bonus plan measured associate productivity by a Labor Efficiency Ratio that improved 0.64 percentage points against a 0.3-point target, a gain Elevance Health does not credit to AI.
Governance and risk
Responsible AI program
Elevance Health's Responsible AI program, led by the Chief Digital and Information Officer and informed by the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, tests AI for bias, accuracy, security and transparency against five guiding principles covering fairness, reliability, explainability, accountability, and privacy and security. An Enterprise Data and AI Governance Council of about 20 managers meets quarterly, reviews AI policies and risks, and answers to the executive leadership team (2026 proxy).
Board oversight
Elevance Health's board oversees the risks of developing and using AI, and the Chief Digital Information Officer reports to it regularly on AI usage and the Responsible AI program with input from the Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer. The Audit Committee reviews AI-related privacy and data security matters (2026 proxy).
Humans decide denials
Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb and Jun 2026 that Elevance Health uses AI to approve prior authorization requests faster but not to deny them, routing any case the AI cannot approve to a human, and Ashok Chennuru said in Jul 2026 that Elevance Health is not automating the denial process. Elevance Health's 2025 Impact Report says clinical judgment stays in human hands.
Controls on agents
Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb 2026 that Elevance Health is setting guardrails that define what each AI agent may and may not do, training agents only on the data their tasks need, and keeping a human in charge of several agents at once to stop an agent drifting from its assigned task.
Suppliers and pay
Elevance Health applies the same AI policies to tools it builds and tools suppliers provide, and suppliers are bound by contract to its AI requirements. Elevance Health's 2025 annual bonus plan listed adoption of AI tools among the measures the board's compensation committee weighed in setting a 110% strategic initiatives modifier (2026 proxy).
Disclosed risks and regulation
Elevance Health's 2025 Form 10-K warns that its AI work carries risks of inaccuracy, harmful bias, discrimination, intellectual property infringement, data privacy and cybersecurity, plus regulatory scrutiny, litigation and negative consumer views of automation, and that failing to follow its responsible AI policies or new AI laws could hurt results. Ashok Chennuru said in Jul 2026 that Elevance Health expects to meet the Jan 2027 federal deadline for electronic prior authorization under CMS-0057.
Recent signals
Oct 21, 2026
Mark Kaye said AI-enabled analytics helped Elevance Health spot potentially inappropriate billing and utilization patterns earlier in Medicaid behavioral health, and Gail Boudreaux said a medical cost management platform had identified more than $300 million of anticipated savings in 2026, without crediting AI.
Oct 21, 2026
Elevance Health's third-quarter 10-Q put Operating Model Transformation Program costs at $147 million for the first nine months of 2026, for a program that aims to expand AI use, remove layers and cut targeted roles.
Oct 2026
CDO Magazine reported that Elevance Health promoted Venkat Alladi to Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Commercial Health Benefits, leading the technology behind digital, data and AI capabilities for the Commercial, Specialty, Federal Employee Program and AmeriBen businesses.
Sep 10, 2026
Mark Kaye told the Wells Fargo healthcare conference that Elevance Health expects AI returns in stages, with the investments it accelerated in 2026 focused on high-volume workflows and benefits starting with earlier detection of cost trends.
Jul 29, 2026
Ashok Chennuru said HealthOS workflows cut denials for insufficient clinical information by 61% at the health systems using them and that Elevance Health is building agent-to-agent data exchange with a large health system.
Jul 15, 2026
Gail Boudreaux said Sydney Health touches about 22 million members and that analytics and AI-enabled tools are spotting cost pressures earlier, while Mark Kaye said 2026 investments include AI adoption and workforce enablement.
Jun 15, 2026
Ratnakar Lavu set out Elevance Health's three AI priorities at AHIP 2026, members, providers and associates, and said Elevance Health does not use AI for denials.
Apr 22, 2026
Gail Boudreaux said Elevance Health is investing more than $1 billion in digital and AI-enabled capabilities, that more than 60,000 associates have AI access, and that HealthOS is cutting denials for missing information by almost 70%.
Mar 27, 2026
Elevance Health's 2026 proxy statement said adoption of AI tools was one of the measures behind 2025 executive bonuses and that more than 91,000 providers connect to HealthOS.
Feb 26, 2026
Ratnakar Lavu told the ViVE conference that AI writes post-call wrap-ups across roughly a million interactions a month and that Elevance Health works with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and AWS.
Feb 25, 2026
Fortune reported that more than 60,000 Elevance Health associates use Spark, that Elevance Health is deploying an enterprise ChatGPT license, and that Ratnakar Lavu plans to scale AI agents in 2026.
Feb 6, 2026
Elevance Health's 2025 Form 10-K said its Responsible AI program is led by the Chief Digital and Information Officer and listed AI that fails to operate as intended among its risks.
Jan 28, 2026
Mark Kaye guided Elevance Health's 2026 adjusted operating expense ratio to 10.6% while investing to embed AI-enabled and digital capabilities.
Dec 30, 2025
Elevance Health described the AI tools its call center associates use, including real-time claim answers, automated wrap-up summaries and sentiment analysis.
Dec 5, 2025
Elevance Health expanded its AI Virtual Assistant to about 22 million members of affiliated commercial plans.
Quick answers
- How does Elevance Health deploy AI?
- Elevance Health deploys AI through Spark, an internal chatbot built on multiple large language models that more than 60,000 associates use, an enterprise ChatGPT license, and AI inside member service, prior authorization, call centers and payment integrity. Chief Digital and Information Officer Ratnakar Lavu owns AI and reports on it to the board. Gail Boudreaux said in Apr 2026 that Elevance Health is investing more than $1 billion in digital and AI-enabled capabilities; Elevance Health has published no dollar return from AI.
- What does Elevance Health use AI for?
- Elevance Health has not published a count of its AI use cases; the ones it names run in member service through the Sydney Health Virtual Assistant, provider matching and outreach, in prior authorization and HealthOS, in call centers, payment integrity and medical cost management, and in associate productivity through Spark and an enterprise ChatGPT license. Elevance Health reports operating results for some of them, such as fewer denials for missing information, but has credited no business-level return to AI for any named use case, and as of Oct 2026 had put no dollar figure on the return from its more than $1 billion digital and AI investment.
- Who leads AI at Elevance Health?
- AI at Elevance Health is led by Ratnakar Lavu (Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer); Ashok Chennuru (Vice President, Chief Data and Digital Transformation Officer); Kyle Weber (Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer). Ownership of AI on the org chart: EVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer Ratnakar Lavu, an executive officer.
- What AI platform does Elevance Health use?
- Spark, a chatbot Elevance Health built in-house on multiple large language models for document analysis and common tasks, runs alongside an enterprise ChatGPT rollout (Feb 2026) and HealthOS, its clinical data exchange with care providers.
- Which AI models does Elevance Health use?
- Elevance Health has not named the models behind Spark; associates are getting an enterprise ChatGPT license from OpenAI, and Ratnakar Lavu said in Feb 2026 that Elevance Health also works with Anthropic, Google and AWS.
- How many Elevance employees use AI?
- More than 60,000 of Elevance Health's roughly 97,100 employees use AI productivity tools (Oct 2025), and its Virtual Assistant was available to about 22 million commercial members in Dec 2025.
- How far has AI spread at Elevance Health?
- Elevance Health sits at Scaling: more than 60,000 of its roughly 97,100 employees use AI productivity tools such as the in-house Spark chatbot, AI runs in production in member service, prior authorization, call centers and payment integrity, and EVP Ratnakar Lavu owns the Digital Platforms and AI Office and reports AI usage to the board. Elevance Health falls short of Embedded because it has published neither weekly usage nor any dollar return from AI, even as its 2026 to 2027 Operating Model Transformation Program removes layers, redesigns workflows and expands the use of AI.
Open questions
- What business return has Elevance Health earned on its more than $1 billion digital and AI investment, and when will it publish one?
- How many AI use cases does Elevance Health run in production, and how many are still pilots?
- Which large language models power Spark, and on which clouds or data centers do Elevance Health's models run?
- How many Elevance Health associates use AI each week, given that the 60,000 figure has been described as both use and access, and how far has the enterprise ChatGPT license rolled out?
- How many roles has the Operating Model Transformation Program cut, and how much of the change does Elevance Health attribute to AI?
- How much of the more than $300 million in anticipated savings identified by Elevance Health's medical cost management platform in 2026 comes from AI?
- What business return do deployed tools with no published figures deliver, such as the Virtual Assistant, the call center tools, payment integrity analytics and Spark?
- Which HealthOS denial measure is current: 68% fewer denials (Oct 2025), almost 70% (Apr 2026) or 61% fewer denials for insufficient clinical information (Jun 2026)?
- Has the Virtual Assistant reached Medicare members in 2026, as Elevance Health planned?
- What do Anthropic, Google and AWS supply to Elevance Health, if anything, beyond the collaboration Ratnakar Lavu described?
- Whom does Ashok Chennuru report to, and how many people work in the Digital Platforms and AI Office?
Sources
Elevance Health
- Elevance Health expands Virtual Assistant (Dec 5, 2025)
- Elevance Health powers career growth, AI training with OpenAI (Sep 18, 2025)
- How AI helps improve the consumer experience (Dec 30, 2025)
- AI in healthcare: a conversation with Elevance Health's Chief Digital Information Officer (Oct 16, 2025)
- How responsible artificial intelligence could simplify healthcare (Apr 9, 2025)
- Elevance Health makes clinical review faster, more connected with Health OS (Jun 23, 2026)
- Elevance Health announces leadership appointments (Mar 31, 2026)
- Advancing Health: featured experts and executive bios
Filings and investor materials
- Elevance Health 2025 Form 10-K (filed Feb 6, 2026)
- 2026 proxy statement (filed Mar 27, 2026)
- 2025 Impact Report
- Q1 2026 Form 10-Q (Apr 22, 2026)
- Q3 2026 Form 10-Q (Oct 21, 2026)
- 8-K exhibit: management changes for Carelon and Health Benefits (Feb 26, 2026)
- Q3 2025 earnings call transcript (Oct 21, 2025)
- Q4 2025 earnings call transcript (Jan 28, 2026)
- Q1 2026 earnings call transcript, The Motley Fool (Apr 22, 2026)
- Q2 2026 earnings call transcript (Jul 15, 2026)
- Q3 2026 earnings call transcript, The Motley Fool (Oct 21, 2026)
- Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference transcript, Stock Analysis (Sep 10, 2026)
News
- Fortune: After Nike and Kohl's, Elevance Health's CDIO takes on health care (Feb 25, 2026)
- MedCity News: How Elevance Health is and isn't using AI (Feb 26, 2026)
- MedCity News: Elevance Health's 3 key priorities for AI (Jun 15, 2026)
- Healthcare Innovation: Elevance Health sees AI as key to coordination between payers and providers (Jul 29, 2026)
- Behavioral Health Business: Elevance Health to deepen AI investments (Oct 21, 2025)
- Healthcare Brew: How Elevance Health is using generative AI (Jan 10, 2024)
- The Health Care Blog: Ratnakar Lavu interview (Mar 13, 2026)
- HLTH podcast: Scaling responsible AI in healthcare, with Ashok Chennuru (Mar 24, 2026)
- Fierce Healthcare: Elevance Health posts $1.4B in profit in Q3 earnings beat (Oct 21, 2026)
- CDO Magazine: Venkat Alladi named Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Elevance Health (Oct 2026)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Elevance Health profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 1, 2026
