Babylon founder Ali Parsa has raised funding from Swedish VC Norrsken for a new AI healthtech venture, according to documents from the business registry in Jersey.
Quadrivia Limited, the parent company of a UK-based entity that cites Parsa as a “person with significant control”, lists Norrsken as holding 638k shares in the company.
The news comes just over a year on from once-unicorn healthtech Babylon collapsing, with investors — many of which were Swedish — losing hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
Quadrivia has the ambition of becoming an “AI agent for healthcare”, according to one source, with direct knowledge of the company.
Ali Parsa declined to comment. Norrsken did not respond to a request for comment.
“AI agent for healthcare”
Sources tell Sifted that the product could be a triaging tool for insurers, or an automation platform for back office processes in healthcare.
Parsa was listed as founder and CEO of Quadrivia on healthtech event HLTH’s website in June, an event he was due to speak at before pulling out. Sifted understands that former Babylon research scientists Damir Juric and Adam Baker are two early employees at Quadrivia.
Sifted reached out to both to confirm their involvement in Quadrivia, but did not receive a response.
The company is currently operating in stealth but was actively hiring for several roles in June this year, including an LLM research engineer and a clinician.
According to Companies House documents for the company’s UK entity, Quadrivia (UK) Limited, Parsa is a resident of Spain and holds 75% or more shares in the company. The UK entity was incorporated in August this year, while the Jersey entity was set up in October 2023.
Rising from the ashes
Just over a year ago European healthtech was reeling as its one-time poster child Babylon collapsed and was sold for parts after running out of cash.
It was a steep turn of fortunes for a company which had taken the region’s tech scene by storm when it raised a $550m round in 2019 to expand to the US. At its peak, Babylon was valued at $4.2bn.
But an ill-fated SPAC deal in 2021 left the company trying to plug a $300m shortfall in its finances. Babylon delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in June 2023 as its debt funder Albacore Capital looked to recoup some losses, before a last ditch deal collapsed in August, causing the company to scramble to find a new buyer before the money ran out.
Parsa’s not new to raising funds from Scandinavia. Before Babylon shareholders had their stakes wiped in June 2023, Swedish investors — including Kinnevik, VNV Global, pension fund AMF and Swedbank Robur — owned over 42% of the company.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/ali-parsa-norrsken-ai-healthtech-news/
