Previous, a company that uses artificial intelligence to speed health insurance approvals for medical procedures, raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by NEA, according to two people familiar with the deal. Current investors are Sequoia, which ran Anterior’s A $3.2 million seed round last Septemberand Neo, the accelerator that helped the company launch in the summer of 2022, also participated in Series A financing.
Numerous angel investors also participated in the round, including Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, who was hired by Microsoft in March to lead the tech giant’s consumer artificial intelligence division.
NEA and Anterior didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anterior, formerly often known as Co:helm, was founded by Abdel Mahmoud, a former doctor who left medicine to pursue a master’s degree in computer science and a profession in the technology industry after becoming frustrated with the period of time he spent on administrative functions relatively than patience.
The company has built a second pilot using LLM technology that helps nurses and doctors save hours on collecting insurance-required medical records. Anterior’s solution goals to reduce denials and accelerate patient access to care.
While Anterior’s initial offering includes prior authorization automation, the company eventually plans to expand it to other medical administrative functions.
Mohamad Makhzoumi, general partner managing NEA’s healthcare team and co-CEO of the company, has joined Anterior’s board of directors. Makhzoumi’s investments include Tempus, a genomic testing and data analytics company founded by Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky, which plans to go public next week after a valuation to $6.1 billion. Makhzoimi also backed Xaira, an AI-powered drug discovery startup that launched this 12 months and received $1 billion in funding.
Anterior competes with Cohere Health, one other prior authorization automation provider that led in February Deerfield Managementwith participation from Define ventures, Flare Capital Partners, The capital of longitude AND Polaris Partnersbringing the five-year-old company’s total funding to $106 million.