London surgical AI startup XRlabs has raised an $8.4m (€7.48m, about £6.3m) seed round led by Palo Alto deep-tech investor Playground Global, with London healthtech fund Eka Ventures also taking part. Omar Ishrak, who ran Medtronic from 2011 to 2020, joins as chair.
XRlabs was founded in 2024 by Dr Ali Haddad, a practising neurosurgeon who is also chief executive. The company is based at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering and has a second office in Palo Alto. Its software sits on top of the imaging and navigation equipment hospitals already own, so theatres do not need to buy new hardware to use it.
The deal
Playground Global led the seed, with Eka Ventures participating. The valuation and ownership split were not disclosed, and the company has not announced any earlier institutional funding. That makes this the first priced institutional round on its cap table to be made public.
The appointment of Ishrak is significant for an early-stage medtech business. Before leading Medtronic, one of the world's largest medical-device makers, he chaired Intel's board. Bringing in a chair of that profile at seed stage is unusual. It points to a company preparing early for regulatory work and partnerships with device makers.
The product
XRlabs uses computer vision and deep learning to combine live scope video, navigation data and pre-operative CT and MRI scans into one anatomy-aware view. It has two main products:
- XRlabs SIM builds patient-specific 3D models, or digital twins, from scans so that surgeons can plan and rehearse.
- SurgicalOS brings that digital twin into the live operative view during surgery.
The company says its technology has been used in more than 100 surgical cases on three continents. It also reports a first-in-human use of physical AI in cranial neurosurgery, carried out under research conditions with an ORBEYE 4K 3D exoscope. In addition, XRlabs says it produced AI-designed, patient-specific implants that were used in surgery to separate craniopagus twins.
Separately, XRlabs has been awarded compute time on the UK's AI Research Resource. This is non-dilutive support that does not affect the cap table.
Use of funds
The money will pay for larger engineering and clinical teams. It will also fund regulatory approval work in the UK, Europe and the US, and more clinical evidence-gathering at partner hospitals.
For Playground, the investment adds to its physical AI portfolio. General partner Bruce Leak said the strongest companies in the field are built by people who have faced the problem directly. Haddad described the operating theatre as the next frontier for physical AI.
What's next
Regulatory approval will shape XRlabs' next raise. Software that influences decisions during surgery generally needs medical-device certification before it can be sold commercially. The pace of approvals in the UK, EU and US is therefore likely to determine both the timing and the size of a Series A.
Original source: EU-Startups — https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/10/london-based-surgical-intelligence-company-xrlabs-raises-e7-48-million-to-bring-ai-into-the-operating-room/
