A Columbus entrepreneur who just sold his last company for hundreds of millions of dollars is already building the next one. Alex Frommeyer, co-founder of Beam Benefits, has raised $21 million in seed funding for a new startup called Stack, which aims to rethink how small businesses provide health insurance to their workers.
The seed round was led by Austin-based venture capital firm 8VC and A*, with additional participation from Heartland Ventures and The Ohio Fund, according to Axios. Frommeyer co-founded Stack not long after Principal Financial Group announced its agreement to acquire Beam Benefits, the employee benefits company he built into a platform serving more than 25,000 small businesses and generating roughly $175 million in premiums in 2025, according to Insurance Business. Frommeyer originally raised $170 million for Beam Benefits, per Axios, and built his reputation at the company before moving on to his next venture.
A New Model For Small Business Health Coverage
Stack is built around Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs, a federal framework that lets employers set a fixed insurance allowance and reimburse workers' health care spending rather than enroll everyone in a single group plan. The Axios report notes that ICHRAs allow a company to offer, for example, a $500 monthly health allowance per person instead of spending that same $500 per person on traditional group benefits. Stack's platform then uses artificial intelligence tools to help individual employees pick their own coverage bundles based on preferred doctors, prescription needs, and other personal factors, rather than defaulting to a one-size-fits-all corporate plan, according to the same account from Ohio Tech News.
The regulatory groundwork for this approach dates back further than Stack itself. ICHRAs were formally established under federal rules issued in June 2019 by the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, taking effect the following January, according to Healthinsurance.org. Axios places the framework's introduction in 2020. Adoption has accelerated quickly since: employer use of ICHRAs grew 99% between 2025 and 2026, with an estimated one million workers now receiving benefits through individual coverage arrangements, per the same Healthinsurance.org data. About two-thirds of small businesses adopting ICHRAs in 2026 had not previously offered group health coverage at all.
Rising Costs Are Pushing Employers To Look Elsewhere
The timing lines up with a rough stretch for employer health spending. Per Axios, employee health care prices have risen for five years running, climbing around $400 from the previous year, and employers are bracing for an 11% increase in 2027 that Axios describes as the largest jump in more than two decades. Ohio Tech News frames the pressure in similar terms, citing benefits consulting forecasts of a 9.5% increase in healthcare costs in 2026 and up to 11.1% in 2027, which would push average employer healthcare expenses above $19,000 per worker. Kaiser Family Foundation survey data cited by Insurance Business found the average annual family premium for employer-sponsored coverage hit $26,993 in 2025, a pace that has outstripped both inflation and wage growth.
Frommeyer told Axios that ICHRAs require companies to understand the math and market nuances involved in switching away from group plans, which is where Stack comes in. Stack works with companies whose employees are largely based in Central Ohio, and much of its team came over from Beam Benefits, according to Axios. Frommeyer said he plans to build the company in person in Downtown Columbus, and Stack intends to use Central Ohio as a proof of concept before considering wider expansion, a strategy Ohio Tech News frames as testing the model locally before scaling nationwide.
Columbus's Repeat-Founder Moment
Frommeyer told Axios he is very excited about what is happening with Columbus founders and the startup talent market right now, describing himself as part of a mature wave of repeat founders and leaders building their second and third companies. He told Axios that Columbus startups are back. Axios notes that repeat founders typically bring more experience, more connections and a better ability to attract investment than first-time entrepreneurs, even as Ohio startups have generally struggled to find funding while national investment dollars have shifted toward artificial intelligence and coastal markets.
That struggle has played out alongside real physical and policy momentum for Columbus's tech scene. Rev1 Ventures opened a 43,000-square-foot facility called Software Alley at The Peninsula in Franklinton in February, giving local startups flexible workspace, as Hoodline previously reported. That same month, the Ohio General Assembly debated Senate Bill 9, which would align state tax rules with federal changes expanding the Qualified Small Business Stock capital gains exemption ceiling to $75 million for startup investors, a fight Hoodline also covered as lawmakers weighed how to keep repeat founders and their backers in the state.
Whether Stack's bet pays off will hinge on a question the dossier leaves open: whether individual workers embrace picking their own health coverage or find the process more burdensome than the group plans it replaces. For now, Frommeyer is wagering that Columbus, and the ICHRA model itself, are ready for the shift.
