XRlabs, a Surgical Intelligence startup, has raised £6.5 million in seed funding led by Playground Global, with participation from Eka Ventures. The funding accelerates the development and clinical deployment of XRlabs’ device-agnostic platform, which embeds real-time AI directly into the operating room to act as a co-pilot for surgical teams.
XRlabs develops modular software that operates as an external AI layer across existing surgical systems, using computer vision and deep learning to turn live surgical video into real-time intelligence at the point of care. The platform has demonstrated integration across core operating room hardware, running on 4K 3D surgical scopes, interfacing with navigation systems, and fusing live surgical video, navigation telemetry and pre-operative CT and MRI imaging into a single real-time, anatomy-aware view of the operation. Rather than requiring hospitals to replace equipment, XRlabs connects and augments systems already in place to enhance visualisation, situational awareness and workflow.
XRlabs’ platform has been used across more than one hundred surgical cases on three continents. Recent clinical and commercial milestones include first-in-human use of physical AI in cranial neurosurgery integrated with the ORBEYE 4K 3D exoscope under research conditions, and a world first in AI-designed patient-specific implants used in the successful separation of craniopagus twins in partnership with UK charity Gemini Untwined, documented by BBC News. XRlabs is also named as a Global NVIDIA Partner in robotics, using NVIDIA Jetson Thor and NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare to bring low-latency perception, tool tracking and intent-aware automation to surgical scopes, and has received recognition of XRlabs SIM among TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025 for its use of AI and extended reality in surgical planning.
Founded by practising neurosurgeon Ali Haddad and headquartered in London with offices in Palo Alto, XRlabs combines clinical expertise with a team of engineers to build Surgical Intelligence as a new runtime capability in surgery. Alongside the seed round, XRlabs announces that Omar Ishrak has joined as Chair of its Board of Directors, bringing experience from leading Medtronic as Chairman and CEO, chairing the board of Intel, and serving on the boards of Amgen and Cleveland Clinic.
XRlabs plans to use the new capital to grow its engineering and clinical teams, advance the platform through regulatory pathways in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and expand the clinical evidence base across partner institutions on three continents. The financing is complemented by UK Government support through a compute allocation on the UK AI Research Resource, supporting development, testing and scaling of XRlabs’ AI capabilities.
Our conviction is that the operating room is the next frontier for physical AI. Surgery generates extraordinary data, yet almost none of it becomes intelligence in the moments that matter most. This financing lets us change that at scale, moving Surgical Intelligence from landmark first cases to foundational infrastructure in every operating room.
The best physical AI companies come from people who've experienced a problem in their field firsthand and have the deep expertise to know how to fix it. XRlabs is built on Dr. Haddad’s years of experience as a practicing neurosurgeon, combined with a team of skilled engineers. That’s the sort of combination we look for: someone who has lived the problem, backed by people who can build the solution.
The operating room is one of the richest, most underused sources of data in medicine, and the opportunity to turn that data into real-time surgical intelligence is enormous. I've spent my career bringing new technology into hospitals, and I see that same potential in Ali and the team at XRlabs. I'm looking forward to helping guide the company as it moves from landmark clinical firsts to a platform used in operating rooms everywhere.
