With the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, Omniscia Health Inc., which does business as Omniscia AI, has expanded beyond its health care roots and landed customers in the financial services and sports sectors, positioning the Colbert-based startup for scaled growth this year, says CEO Brandon Tanner.

The technology startup builds AI systems that serve as digital representatives for organizations and are designed to interact with customers, provide guidance, and operate within guardrails to keep responses accurate and compliant.

Founded in 2021 by Fred Brown, a serial entrepreneur and early innovator in the AI industry, Omniscia AI was originally focused on serving the health care market, including the behavioral health sector.

As reported by the Journal in January 2025, the startup began exploring additional vertical markets, including banking, financial technology, education, sports, and the name, image, and likeness environments that enable collegiate athletes to generate revenue.

“With the boom in the AI world, so much is changing rapidly,” Tanner says. “And so to take advantage of where markets are moving and where they are shifting, we needed to be a little broader.”

The company is in the midst of a fundraising round, with a goal to secure between $1.5 million and $2 million in capital, Tanner says. Conservatively, Tanner anticipates securing 40 new customers this year and an annual revenue of between $600,000 to $1 million.

With new customers in financial services and international sports, Omniscia AI is shifting from product development to customer acquisition mode, he says.

“Last year was about building the foundation; this year is about scaling,” Tanner says. 

If fundraising efforts stay on track and projected contracts materialize, Tanner says he expects the company to reach profitability within a year, a milestone that would mark a major step forward for the company as it carves out a niche in the AI landscape.

A few of the startup’s first clients are credit unions that were drawn to Omniscia AI’s technology and its focus on building financial technology systems that can be confidently used in highly regulated industries, Tanner says.

Omniscia AI has built an AI system for Harrisonburg, Virginia-based Parkview Federal Credit Union, where digital representative “Penny” guides members through financial questions and product options. Earlier this month, digital representative “Sparky,” with Jefferson City, Missouri-based MECE Credit Union, was launched. Additional credit union clients are expected to come online later this year, Tanner says.

Omniscia AI also has also is appealing to the world of women’s professional soccer through a partnership with former Colombia national team player and sports broadcaster Isabella Echeverri.

Omniscia AI is developing a multilingual digital emulation of Echeverri that can assist soccer clubs with onboarding and provide rules and league information to fans, players, coaches, and referees. Echeverri’s digital bot will also serve within a mentorship and mental wellness capacity, Tanner says.

He notes that Echeverri’s digital emulation can provide role model conversations that give encouragement to young female athletes with a focus on shared experiences, while being careful not to trespass into providing therapy to users. Using Google AI, Echeverri has allowed Omniscia’s team to digitally clone her voice, personality, and likeness, he says.

“If you meet her in person or on Zoom and then have a conversation with her bot, it’s her,” Tanner says. “It’s her voice, it’s her stories, and it’s very much her personality-wise. You can speak with her in any language, and it’ll come back with her voice in any language.”

Echeverri is a soccer analyst for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises and will be sideline broadcasting the men’s FIFA World Cup this summer, he adds. Tanner also contends that women’s soccer is the fastest-growing sport globally, and while the U.S. is not especially drawn to the game, Echeverri is an international star, particularly in Europe and Latin America.

The partnership with Echeverri poses tremendous growth potential, Tanner says. The technology can be used across multiple soccer leagues and scale globally through language acquisition. The technology can also be expanded into other vertical markets, he says, noting that Echeverri is interested in providing financial literacy through her digital emulation.

“She wants to use it for good,” Tanner says. “With this exponential growth in the female sports world, specifically soccer, there’s a lot of opportunity.”

Early last year, Brown hired Tanner as CEO with the core purpose of broadening the company’s vertical markets. Brown now serves as the company’s president, founder, and chief technology officer. Omniscia AI has seven full-time staff, including Brown and Tanner, who work out of Fuel Coworking at 809 W. Main, in downtown Spokane.

As reported by the Journal, Brown has a special skill set in conversational AI. In 2002, he founded Next IT Corp., a conversational AI company that pioneered AI-powered virtual assistants, including “Ask Jenn” for Alaska Airlines, and “Ask Sgt. Star” for the U.S. Army. In 2017, he sold Next IT to New York-based technology company, Verint, for nearly $30 million.

Tanner has a longstanding relationship with Brown. A serial entrepreneur himself, Tanner, while in college at Whitworth University in the late 1990s, co-founded A Perfect Web Inc., a website builder that created systems for taking payments online.

“We were originally trying to convince people that they were going to use credit cards to buy stuff online,” says Tanner, who co-founded A Perfect Web with fellow classmate Sam Fleming. “Nobody believed us in 1997 — no one is ever going to buy anything online. There’s no way.”

Seeking mentorship on his startup, Tanner connected with Brown at a LaunchPad Inland Northwest event, starting a decades-long relationship. After Brown learned more about A Perfect Web, Next IT acquired it, Tanner says. The technology in A Perfect Web was subsequently implemented into Next IT's AI technology.