Gyde CEO Will Johnson on how health insurance brokers can benefit from AI

Each week, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

When it comes to health insurance, AI can be a controversial tool.

We already know payers and providers are using it in claims reviews and disputes. But Will Johnson, CEO and co-founder of AI startup Gyde, thinks it can do more. His company, which launched in January, supported by $60 million in seed capital from venture capital firms, acquires independent insurance agencies and uses AI to help them grow.

Johnson told Healthcare Brew why he believes AI can also be a valuable tool for brokers—the professionals who help individuals and groups understand and buy health insurance. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Working alongside agency owners who built something from nothing and watching what happens when you remove the ceiling.

These are entrepreneurs who took real risk, built real client relationships, and then hit a capacity wall that had nothing to do with their talent. The advisory workload they’re being asked to carry is growing faster than most independent firms can absorb. When we can help them break through that, and when their clients feel it, that’s what makes this worth doing.

What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about?

The unbundling of fully insured consumer health products. For a long time, employers and individuals have been handed a single package and told to make it work.

Now employers are increasingly turning to ICHRAs, cash-pay drug programs, and direct reimbursement models to get ahead of [high healthcare costs]. A similar dynamic is happening in the Medicare Advantage space with more plan options becoming available instead of one size fits all. What excites me is that as plan design gets more flexible and personalized, the broker becomes more important and the client gets better coverage. Helping a client build the right portfolio of products for their specific situation is exactly the kind of work that AI can scale without replacing the human judgment at the center of it.

What healthcare trend are you least optimistic about?

Value-based care. I want to be clear that I’m philosophically aligned with the intent, and I think the ambition is exactly right. But I’ve spent enough time inside the system to have real skepticism about the near-term path. The incentive structures are deeply entrenched. Value-based care requires structural realignment to actually take hold, and I don’t see the near-term conditions for it. I hope I’m wrong. The system genuinely needs it to work.