XRlabs Announces $8.4 Million Seed Funding Led by Playground Global
XRlabs, the Surgical Intelligence company, led by Ali Haddad and the team, announced it has raised $8.4 million in seed funding led by Playground Global, with participation from Eka Ventures. Alongside the seed round, XRlabs also announced that Omar Ishrak has joined the company as Chair of its Board of Directors.
The funding will accelerate XRlabs’ development and clinical deployment of its device-agnostic platform, bringing real-time AI into operating rooms as a surgical co-pilot to improve visualization, situational awareness, and workflows while integrating with existing hospital systems.
Founded by neurosurgeon Dr. Ali Haddad, London-headquartered XRlabs, with offices in Palo Alto, develops an AI software layer that converts live surgical video into real-time intelligence. Its platform has been used in over 100 surgical cases across three continents, integrating 4K 3D scopes, navigation systems, and pre-operative CT and MRI scans into a unified, anatomy-aware view without requiring hospitals to replace existing equipment.
“Our conviction is that the operating room is the next frontier for physical AI,” said Dr. Haddad, CEO of XRlabs. “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.”
XRlabs’ funding follows a year of clinical and commercial progress, including research-stage use of physical AI in cranial neurosurgery, AI-designed patient-specific implants for the separation of craniopagus twins, and a global NVIDIA robotics partnership using Jetson Thor and Isaac for Healthcare. Its XRlabs SIM platform was also named among TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025 for its application of AI and extended reality to surgical planning.
The funding will support team expansion, regulatory progress in the UK, Europe and the US, and clinical evidence generation across partner institutions on three continents. XRlabs has also secured a compute allocation through the UK AI Research Resource (AIRR), the country’s national AI computing infrastructure, to accelerate the development, testing and scaling of its AI capabilities.
“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. “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,” said Ishrak. “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.”
