XRlabs raises $8.4M seed to build AI into every operating room

XRlabs (London) has raised a $8.4M (€7.48M) seed led by Playground Global, the Palo Alto-based deeptech venture firm, with participation from Eka Ventures. Alongside the close, Omar Ishrak — who led Medtronic as Chairman and CEO from 2011 to 2020 and previously chaired Intel's board — joined as Chair of the Board. Founded in 2024 by practising neurosurgeon Dr. Ali Haddad, XRlabs is headquartered at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering.

What XRlabs builds

XRlabs describes its category as Surgical Intelligence — modular, device-agnostic software that sits as an external AI layer across the surgical systems hospitals already own. The platform uses computer vision and deep learning to combine live video from surgical scopes, navigation telemetry, and pre-operative CT and MRI imaging into a single real-time, anatomy-aware view of each procedure.

The company has two core products. XRlabs SIM is a patient-specific planning and rehearsal tool that transforms standard scans into interactive 3D models, or digital twins, of the patient's anatomy. SurgicalOS is the intraoperative layer: it brings the digital twin created in SIM into the live operative view, giving the surgeon AI-generated anatomical intelligence during the procedure itself. Together, the company calls this its "Pyramid of Surgical Intelligence" — a layered approach that mirrors how surgeons are trained, from anatomical understanding to real-time operative skill.

The platform has been deployed across more than 100 surgical cases on three continents. Clinical milestones include the first-in-human use of physical AI in cranial neurosurgery, integrated with an ORBEYE 4K 3D exoscope, and a world-first in AI-designed patient-specific implants, used in the successful separation of craniopagus twins. XRlabs has also been awarded a compute allocation on the UK AI Research Resource (AIRR), the UK's national AI compute infrastructure.

Playground Global's operating-room thesis

"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," said Bruce Leak, General Partner at Playground Global. Playground specialises in companies that apply AI to the physical world — robotics, hardware, infrastructure. A surgeon-founded company building AI that operates inside a live procedure is a precise match for that thesis: the technical complexity is high, the domain knowledge barrier is high, and the switching costs once embedded in a clinical workflow are significant.

Eka Ventures' participation adds a second London-healthtech signal. The fund, which closed its €91.5M Fund II in April 2026 focused on health, wellbeing, and sustainability, has backed Axle Energy (energy flexibility) and Medly AI (AI tutoring) in ProYarn's archive this year. XRlabs is the health-focused bet in that portfolio.

The funding will support engineering and clinical team growth, advance products through regulatory pathways in the UK, Europe, and the US, and extend the clinical evidence base at partner institutions globally. SurgicalOS is in development and not yet commercially available — the regulatory clearance cycle is the governing constraint on what the seed can accomplish.