Company leader
Israel Krush
Co-founder and CEO
Hyro
Israel Krush is co-founder and chief executive of Hyro, a New York City, New York, company that makes AI agents for health system call centers, websites, and text messages. An Israeli engineer who came to New York for business school, he built Hyro so a health system's patients can book appointments, find a doctor, or get routine answers without waiting on hold.
Commanding 50 Soldiers at 22
He grew up in Israel, the son of parents who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union, and served in the army's intelligence unit, much of whose work is filtering large amounts of data, including language. "At 22, I was basically the mother and father of 50 people, not nine to five, but living on base. That shaped how I lead today," he said.
Engineering at Intel and Startups
He studied computer science and statistics, "purely because I'm a geek, so I like statistics," he said. He worked as a software engineer at Intel, decided corporate life was not for him, and moved through startups in security and education technology. Before Hyro he was head of product at Zeekit, a computer vision company that let shoppers try on clothes virtually and that Walmart acquired. The common thread was how people interact with computers, through language or through vision.
Founding Hyro at Cornell Tech
In 2017 he moved to the United States for an MBA at Cornell Tech, Cornell University's technology campus in New York City, where he met Rom Cohen in a machine learning class. They bought early voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Home and came away disappointed. That led them to two conclusions: natural language would become the main way people use technology, and such systems were too hard for large organizations to build and maintain. They founded Hyro in 2018 with Uri Valevski.
Hyro reads an organization's existing data, such as its physician directory and website, into a knowledge graph, so its agents can answer questions nobody scripted in advance and staff can see where each answer came from. He has made that visibility central to Hyro's work with hospitals. "Letting an AI decide what to say or write to patients is problematic, and they will have hallucinations," he said in a Black Opal Ventures interview.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic Hyro gave health networks a chatbot that answered questions about the virus and ran self-assessments, and that work convinced the founders healthcare was their market. Healthier Capital led a $45 million round in October 2025, bringing Hyro's total funding to $95 million.
A Passion for Coffee
He moved back to Israel, where much of his network is, though he answers questions about his base with "on an airplane, so wherever I'm needed." He and his wife have four children, and his great love after his family is excellent coffee.