LumenUs Uses AI to Cut Grief-Related Paperwork Burden for Bereaved Families

When Sara Tashakorinia’s husband died in a car accident eight years ago, she faced an estimated 570 hours of paperwork to settle his affairs, a reality that millions of grieving families encounter each year. The experience inspired her to create LumenUs, a grief-care platform that leverages artificial intelligence to automate the most tedious administrative tasks that follow a death.

LumenUs, founded by Tashakorinia last year, focuses on the immediate aftermath of a loss. Users begin with an onboarding questionnaire that captures details about the decedent’s legal and financial situation as well as the user’s emotional state. The platform then prioritizes tasks by urgency, guiding families through filing tax forms, submitting insurance claims, closing bank accounts, and other essential steps. In some instances, the service can surface unclaimed life-insurance benefits, a source of billions of dollars that often goes unnoticed.

“The day a loved one passes, you suddenly become a project manager for a process you never signed up for,” Tashakorinia told TechCrunch. “Our goal is to let AI handle the paperwork so families can focus on healing.” The company’s AI engine scans public and private data sources to locate the appropriate forms, auto-populates fields where possible, and flags deadlines, reducing the manual effort required from bereaved users.

Tashakorinia’s background in cybersecurity informs the platform’s design, which must protect highly sensitive personal and financial information. She is building LumenUs alongside co-founders Sajad Mirzaei, a former engineer at Google and Box, and Larry Keeley, an innovation scientist, professor, and entrepreneur. The team is also consulting with clinicians and social workers to ensure the product respects the emotional dimensions of grief while delivering practical assistance.

LumenUs has been accepted into this year’s Startup Battlefield 200, the flagship showcase at TechCrunch Disrupt, scheduled for October 13-15 in San Francisco. The company plans to release an early-access version of the platform in October, coinciding with its appearance on the Battlefield stage. Participation in the event provides exposure to more than 10,000 technology leaders and potential investors, a critical step for a startup still in its first year of operation.

For founders, LumenUs illustrates how a personal pain point can be transformed into a technology-driven solution with clear market relevance. The company’s approach, combining AI automation with a sensitive onboarding experience, addresses a fragmented space traditionally handled by attorneys, funeral homes, and financial advisors. As the platform rolls out, its ability to secure user trust while delivering measurable time savings will determine whether it can scale beyond the initial post-mortem use case into broader grief-support services.

The upcoming launch at Disrupt will be the first public test of LumenUs’s AI workflow. Observers will watch to see if the startup can convert its early-access users into a sustainable customer base and attract the capital needed to expand its service suite. The outcome could set a precedent for how technology eases the administrative load that often compounds the emotional toll of loss.