Babylon Health, a London-based company which uses AI technology to diagnose potential health issues, has raised $550 million in a funding round that values it at more than $2 billion.
The multinational cohort of investors was led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and included participation by global reinsurance company Munich Re, Swedish investment firm Kinnevik AB and Vostok New Ventures.
Another notable investor in the round – one of the largest in digital health history – is major U.S. insurer Centene.
The company was founded in 2013 and has developed a platform meant to ease increase efficiency in the care delivery system using technology, the company’s products include a GP at Hand, a chatbot used by the NHS, and virtual telehealth services for patients who need follow up care. According to Babylon it delivers 4,000 clinical consultations a day.
The new capital infusion will go toward expanding the company’s global footprint into the U.S. and Asia and developing more technical capabilities in the management and care of chronic diseases.
“Our mission at Babylon is to put accessible and affordable healthcare into the hands of everyone on earth. This investment will allow us to maximise the number of lives we touch across the world. We have a long way to go and a lot still to deliver. We are grateful to our investors, our partners and 1,500 brilliant Babylonians for allowing us to forge ahead with our mission,” Babylon CEO Ali Parsa said in a statement.
“Chronic conditions are an increasing burden to affordability of healthcare across the globe. Our technology provides a solid base for a comprehensive solution and our scientists, engineers, and clinicians are excited to work on it.”
Babylon’s partnership with NHS has been criticized by some clinicians and was the subject of a 2018 Forbes story that reported that the company’s triage product was often wrong and that it exaggerated the effectiveness of its technology.
In response the company said that the story “used a distorted lens to magnify the views of a few anonymous individuals whilst ignoring the findings from multiple government regulators, dismissed the integrity of the hundreds of doctors who work with us and ignored the lengths we have gone to as we have shared our science with the world.”
