Anterior gets $20 million from NEA to accelerate health insurance approvals with AI

Front, a company that uses AI to speed health insurance approvals for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a post-money valuation of $95 million led by NEA, according to two people familiar with the matter with the deal. Existing investors Sequoia, which led Anterior’s $3.2 million seed round last Septemberand Neo, an accelerator that helped the company launch in summer 2022, also participated in the Series A financing.

The round also involved a host of angel investors, including Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, who was hired by Microsoft in March to lead the tech giant’s consumer AI division.

NEA and Anterior did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anterior, formerly known as Co:helm, was co-founded by Abdel Mahmoud, a former physician who left medicine to pursue a master’s degree in computer science and a career in technology after becoming frustrated with the amount of time he spent on administrative functions. instead of with patience.

The company has built an LLM-powered co-pilot that allows nurses and physicians to save hours of collecting medical documentation required by insurance. Anterior’s solution aims to reduce denials and accelerate patient access to care.

While Anterior’s initial offering focuses on prior authorization automation, the company plans to eventually expand into other medical administrative functions.

Mohamad Makhzoumi, managing general partner of NEA’s healthcare team and co-CEO of the company, 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 make an initial public offering at a valuation next week. to $6.1 billion. Makhzoimi also backed Xaira, an AI drug discovery startup that launched this year with $1 billion in funding.

Anterior competes with Cohere Health, another prior authorization automation provider, which in February led Management of Deerfieldwith the participation of Define companies, Flare Capital Partners, Capital longitude And Polaris Partnersbringing the five-year-old company’s total funding to $106 million.