Anterior, a company leveraging AI to accelerate health insurance approval for medical procedures, has secured a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation, led by NEA, according to two people familiar with the matter. Current investors Sequoia, which led Anterior’s $3.2 million seed round last September, and Neo, an accelerator that aided the company’s launch in the summer of 2022, also took part in the Series A funding.
The round additionally saw involvement from several angel investors, including Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, who was recruited by Microsoft in March to lead its consumer AI division.
NEA and Anterior did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anterior, previously known as Co:helm, was co-founded by Abdel Mahmoud, a former physician who left the medical field to pursue a master’s degree in computer science and a tech career due to his frustration with the excessive administrative tasks over direct patient care.
The company has developed an LLM-powered co-pilot designed to assist nurses and doctors in saving hours on assembling medical documentation required by insurance. Anterior’s platform aims to minimize denial rates and speed up patient access to care.
Although Anterior’s initial focus is on prior authorization automation, the company plans to eventually broaden its scope to other medical administrative functions.
Mohamad Makhzoumi, managing general partner on NEA’s healthcare team and co-CEO of the firm, has joined Anterior’s board. Makhzoumi’s investments include Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company founded by Groupon’s Eric Lefkofsky, which is looking to IPO next week at a valuation of up to $6.1 billion. Makhzoumi has also supported 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 raised $50 million in February led by Deerfield Management, with contributions from Define Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Longitude Capital, and Polaris Partners, bringing the five-year-old company’s total funding to $106 million.
