Adi Tantravahi was shadowing his aunt at her medical practice in South Texas when he saw how much time, energy and money was wasted by healthcare providers navigating the complex insurance appeals process.
Inspired, Tantravahi began researching how to use open source artificial intelligence to automate the appeal of insurance claim denials.
“I kept thinking about it,” Tantravahi said. “And I thought, ‘Okay, there’s got to be a better way to do it.’ ”
He founded Cofactor AI in 2023, and just over a year later his company has grown more than 500% and is poised to double in size by 2025, he said.
Brandon Hagen, left, product experience specialist at Meta, gives a demo of Meta Quest 3 for tech enthusiast Ho Ming Li during Meta’s Llama Hackathon on Friday.
“We are trying to strive to become the financial intelligence layer for healthcare,” Tantravahi said. “We want to be the ones to help process all the financial transactions that take place to ensure providers are treated fairly.”
Projects like Tantravahi’s are the focus of Meta’s first Llama Hackathon in Austin, which kicked off Friday evening with a panel discussion on open-source AI and live demos of how Llama is being used to have a greater impact on society.
The hackathon – organized by Meta, AITX and Cerebral Valley – is part of Meta’s global Llama 3.1 Impact Grants program, which encourages research into how Llama can address local challenges.
Meta opened the event discussing how open-source artificial intelligence – an AI system that can be freely accessed, studied, modified and shared – is key to the growth and development of artificial intelligence.
Adi Tantravahi, founder of Cofactor AI, will speak to visitors during the hackathon on Friday. “We’re trying to aim to become the financial intelligence layer for healthcare,” Tantravahi said of his company.
“We believe open source is necessary for a positive AI future because it ensures more people around the world have access to the benefits and opportunities AI can provide,” said Meta Policy Program Manager Amanda Lu. “Open-source AI means more people can build cool things, but also projects that move our society and economy forward.”
Meta AI is an example of open-source AI, which is how many of the developers who had demos on Friday were able to build their businesses.
Tantravahi’s Cofactor AI, and others like Groq and Toolhouse, gave live demonstrations of their products. Groq, an AI inference infrastructure company, has created a new type of processor that makes AI work faster; Toolhouse is a cloud platform that allows developers to quickly code and manage AI.
“AI has more potential than any modern technology to transform economic opportunity and improve quality of life,” said John Bockstanz, innovation policy manager at Meta. “And there’s really no better way than to see how open source makes that possible by making those benefits more accessible to small businesses, institutions and students. And that’s why we invited some developers and some members of the AI ecosystem to come together.”
During a panel discussion Friday during the hackathon, from left to right, John Bockstanz, innovation policy manager at Meta; Julian Saks, founder of Finetune; Kal Clark, CEO of Zauron Labs; and Mark Heaps, chief tech evangelist and brand VP at Groq.
During the event, Meta also provided live demonstrations of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Meta Quest 3, both of which use Meta AI to serve consumers.
The Llama Hackathon took place this weekend at Capital Factory, where hackers identified a problem affecting the Austin community and used Llama, Meta’s large language model, to develop a solution to the problem. Participants in the Hackathon had a chance to win prizes such as Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, a DJi RoboMaster S1 or a Tesla Cyberquad.
As part of the Global Impact Grants program, eligible participants could apply for regional funding of up to $100,000 and open call funding of up to $500,000.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Meta hosts Llama Hackathon in Austin: ‘AI has more potential’
