Babylon Holdings, a UK-headquartered digital health technology provider backed by reinsurance firm Munich Re and health insurance provider Centene, has agreed a reverse takeover with special purpose acquisition company Alkuri Global Acquisition Corp.
The merged business will be valued at about $4.2bn and will take the Nasdaq Stock Market listing taken by Alkuri in a $300m initial public offering in February this year.
The deal will be supported by a $230m private investment in public equity financing featuring data analytics technology provider Palantir, AMF Pensionsförsäkring, Sectoral Asset Management, Kinnevik, VNV Global and Swedbank Robur.
Founded in 2013, Babylon has developed a digital healthcare service known as Babylon 360 as well as a portfolio of self-care software tools under the Babylon Cloud Services umbrella.
Munich Re’s Ergo Fund joined Centene, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Kinnevik and Vostok New Ventures in a $550m series C round in August 2019 valuing Babylon above $2bn.
The company had previously raised $85m from investors including Hoxton Ventures, Kinnevik and the Sawiris family office across its series A and B rounds.
Babylon’s founder and chief executive, Ali Parsa, said: “We founded Babylon on a fundamental belief, that it is possible to make quality healthcare accessible and affordable for every person on earth by combining the latest in technology and the best in medical expertise.
“We have achieved one of the highest growth rates every year since our inception, with consistently high clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.
“Becoming a public company is just another step in our journey. We are at the very beginning of our work to reimagine our sector, to make it digital-first and prevention-first and shift the focus away from sick care to true healthcare.”
