Today, Kinetik launched a new brand. We started in 2017 with one narrow problem: transportation providers waiting months to get paid for trips they had already completed. Solving it meant digitizing everything around it, and the work kept growing, from faster payments into infrastructure that empowers seamless access to care. The old brand described where we started. The new one reflects what we’ve become.
Where It Started
Kinetik began in 2017 in the back office of a Brooklyn transportation company. The problems in NEMT were visible every day: trip logs on paper, dispatchers juggling phone calls, drivers waiting 60 to 90 days to get paid for rides they had already completed, and health plans with no way to independently verify any of it. Trip intake lived in one system, fulfillment in another, billing somewhere else entirely. Critical data was trapped in silos across transportation providers, brokers, and health plans, leaving nobody with an accurate view of the program. The people paying the price were members just trying to get to an appointment.
So we built technology to fix what was in front of us: digitize the trip, verify it with GPS, and generate the claim from verified data instead of paperwork.
“We started this company alongside the people navigating the operational realities of NEMT every day: dispatchers, drivers, transportation providers, and the health plans trying to make sense of it all. Those experiences shaped how we built Kinetik,” said Mahbub Rahman, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Kinetik. “What began as a way to digitize trips has evolved into infrastructure that connects eligibility, fulfillment, verification, claims, and payment within a single system of record. The mission is the same. The brand now reflects the scale of the work.”
What We Became
Nine years later, Kinetik has evolved far beyond its origins. Today, our closed-loop infrastructure has processed more than 13 million trips and $1.1 billion in NEMT claims, serving more than 1.5 million members, with network coverage across 44 states through our 20+ dispatch partners.
As we scaled, one thing became clear: technology alone wasn’t enough to fix a structurally broken system. Health plans needed more than what the traditional NEMT model could provide. They needed a strategic operating partner who could bring technology, operations, and governance together.
So that’s what we’ve grown into: a tech-enabled services company that delivers, governs, and modernizes NEMT benefit delivery through a closed-loop infrastructure. “I’ve seen this product through every version, from the first claims tool in 2017 to infrastructure that health plans run entire NEMT programs on,” said Atif Hussain, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer. “Build something that long and you stop thinking in features and start thinking in responsibilities: a member’s ride, a provider’s paycheck, a health plan’s program all flow through one system. The new brand isn’t a reinvention. It’s the first time that how we show up matches what we’ve built.”
The System We’re Replacing
For the past three weeks, we’ve been asking one question across every channel: why doesn’t NEMT make sense?
You can track a meal, a package, and a rideshare in real time. But a member waiting for a ride to dialysis often gets no visibility, no confirmation, just hope. A trip that takes 20 minutes can take days to schedule. Transportation providers often wait 60 to 90 days to get paid. Health plans are held accountable for programs they often can’t independently see into, receiving month-end invoices instead of verifiable trip-level data and waiting on intermediaries for information about their own members. And 5.8 million Americans miss or delay medical care every year because the ride never came.
The federal numbers confirm what the stories show. The HHS Office of Inspector General has reported improper payment rates of six to eight percent, and CMS has made program integrity a federal enforcement priority. This is how NEMT has run for more than two decades: trip intake in one system, fulfillment in another, billing somewhere else entirely. Fragmented by design, manual by default, held together by workarounds.
None of it makes sense.
Kinetik was built to replace that model with something structurally different: a closed-loop infrastructure that digitizes the full lifecycle of every trip, from eligibility and scheduling through GPS verification, claims, and payment, all within a single system of record. Health plans can own, share, or delegate their transportation programs, and regardless of model, they retain program transparency, control, and accountability. No black boxes.
Inside the New Identity
Every element of the new brand was chosen to reflect the work.
The mark. We preserved the original icon to honor continuity with the people and partners who know us, refining only the colors, proportions, and typeface to align with the evolved brand. Every stroke bends softly yet stays sharp and calculated, embodying both precision and care. The icon itself, two converging paths and a dot forming a K, captures our essence in its simplicity. The dot is a person, a destination, an outcome. It’s a reminder that the complex movements we orchestrate across healthcare, the rides, data, benefits, and workflows, aren’t transactions. They’re pathways to care.
The type. Our typography mirrors our voice. We broke from the cold, clinical sans serifs common in health and tech and set our headlines in Alpina, a serif with subtle contrast, quirky shapes, and historical references that make them unmistakably human. Body text is DM Sans: geometric clarity with open, rounded forms, crisp and approachable at any size.
The colors. The primary palette of deep navy and vibrant purple anchors us in tech credibility, creating layouts that feel sophisticated yet modern. The secondary palette tells the deeper story: warm, natural tones of deep green with highlights of mustard and red, expanding beyond typical tech expectations into something calming, grounded, and deeply caring.
What Stays the Same
The rebrand changes how we present ourselves. It changes nothing about why we exist.
We are still focused on removing transportation as a barrier to care. That means programs that are transparent and accountable, costs that can be attributed and verified, reliability members can plan their lives around, and health plans empowered to govern a benefit they’re responsible for. Those principles guided Kinetik from the first trip we digitized, and they guide every trip since.
The Conversation Behind the Reveal
Healthcare is becoming more data-driven, more value-based, and more accountable. Transportation has to evolve with it, from a fragmented service into core healthcare infrastructure where every trip is visible, verifiable, and connected to care.
“Our rebrand reflects the scale, maturity, and operating expertise we’ve built to modernize NEMT delivery,” said Sufian Chowdhury, Co-Founder and CEO of Kinetik. “NEMT is a vital healthcare benefit, and it must be governed with the same level of transparency and accountability as other core services.”
That future was the subject of “State of NEMT 2026: The Future of Healthcare Transportation,” the live panel where our new brand made its debut. Moderated by Mohammad Hossain, the conversation brought together Andrew Peterson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of New Mexico; Ainsley MacLean, MD, FACR, CEO of carcompany.ai; Tonya Copeland, COO of Liberty Health, and Sufian Chowdhury, CEO and cofounder of Kinetik to examine where NEMT is headed and what modern program oversight requires.
An industry where rides take days to schedule, providers wait months to get paid, and health plans can’t independently verify their own programs never made sense.
We’re making it make sense.
Want to see what the new Kinetik can do for your program? Reach out at connect@kinetik.care.
