Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has 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. Existing investors Sequoia, which led Anterior’s $3.2 million seed round last September, and Neo, an accelerator that helped the company launch in the summer of 2022, also participated in the Series A financing.

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

NEA and Anterior didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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

The company has built an LLM-powered co-pilot that helps nurses and doctors save hours on gathering medical documentation required by insurance. Anterior’s solution aims to reduce denial rates and accelerate patient access to care.

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

Mohamad Makhzoumi, managing general partner on NEA’s healthcare team and co-CEO of the firm, joined Anterior’s board. Makhzoumi’s investments include Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company founded by Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky, which is planning to IPO next week at a valuation of up 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 provider of prior authorization automation, which raised a $50 million round in February led by Deerfield Management, with participation from Define Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Longitude Capital and Polaris Partners, bringing the five-year-old company’s total funding to $106 million.