XRlabs, a Surgical Intelligence company headquartered in London with offices in Palo Alto and founded by practicing neurosurgeon Dr. Ali Haddad, announced on October 19, 2026, that it has raised US$8.4 million in Seed funding. The round was led by Playground Global, with participation from Eka Ventures, and will support the company's mission to bring real-time artificial intelligence to operating rooms worldwide. Omar Ishrak, former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, has also joined the company as Chair of the Board.
A Device-Agnostic Platform for Surgical Intelligence
XRlabs develops modular, device-agnostic software that acts as an external AI layer across systems hospitals already use. The platform uses computer vision and deep learning to convert live surgical video into real-time intelligence at the point of care. It has been deployed in more than one hundred surgical cases across three continents.
The platform integrates with core operating room hardware, including 4K 3D surgical scopes and navigation systems, while fusing live video, navigation telemetry, and preoperative CT and MRI imaging into a single anatomy-aware view. This approach allows surgical teams to preserve existing equipment rather than replace it. The company positions the operating room as the next frontier for physical AI.
Clinical Milestones and Industry Recognition
Recent achievements include first-in-human use of physical AI in cranial neurosurgery, integrated with the ORBEYE 4K 3D exoscope under research conditions. XRlabs also supported a world first in AI-designed patient-specific implants during the successful separation of craniopagus twins, a procedure documented by BBC News in partnership with the charity Gemini Untwined. The company has been named a Global NVIDIA Partner in robotics.
Technology Backing and Regulatory Ambitions
Through its partnership with NVIDIA, XRlabs uses NVIDIA Jetson Thor and NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare to deliver low-latency perception, tool tracking, and intent-aware automation for surgical scopes. XRlabs SIM was also recognized among TIME's Best Inventions of 2025 for its use of AI and extended reality in surgical planning. The funding will help grow engineering and clinical teams while advancing regulatory pathways in the UK, Europe, and the United States.
Leadership and Strategic Support
Bruce Leak, General Partner at Playground Global, noted that the best physical AI companies emerge from founders with firsthand problem experience and deep technical expertise. The UK Government has also awarded XRlabs compute allocation on the UK AI Research Resource, the national AI compute infrastructure. This support will help accelerate the development, testing, and scaling of the company's AI capabilities.
Omar Ishrak, who led Medtronic as Chairman and CEO from 2011 to 2020, described the operating room as one of medicine's richest and most underused sources of data. He said the opportunity to turn that data into real-time surgical intelligence is enormous. Ishrak added that he sees the same potential in Dr. Haddad and the team at XRlabs as he moves to help guide the company from early clinical firsts to a platform used everywhere.
With fresh capital, experienced board leadership, and a growing clinical evidence base, XRlabs aims to establish Surgical Intelligence as a standard runtime capability in operating rooms. Its device-agnostic model seeks to avoid costly hardware replacement while unlocking the value of surgical data. The company is now focused on regulatory progress and international expansion as it moves toward broader clinical deployment.