Penelope Health's $100M Bet to Fix Healthcare's Broken Rules

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-18

London-based Penelope Health just raised €87 million ($100 million) to tackle one of the most frustrating problems in American healthcare: figuring out what's actually covered by insurance. The company announced the funding commitment today, along with a partnership with HealthTech infrastructure platform Thoreau. Together, they're building a shared layer for real-time payments and clinical rules. ### Why This Matters If you've ever tried to find out whether a procedure is covered before it happens, you know the pain. The rules are buried in PDFs, scattered across payer websites, and change constantly. Penelope wants to fix that. "The rules that determine whether care is covered by insurance are foundational to the healthcare system, yet they remain opaque, fragmented, difficult to interpret, and are constantly changing," says Dr. Sohum Patel, CEO of Penelope Health. "Penelope was founded to turn that complexity into a dependable, up-to-date reference that healthcare companies can use in real time." ### The Team Behind the Fix Patel co-founded Penelope in 2025 with CTO Mattijs De Paepe. Before starting the company, Patel worked in the UK's National Health Service at Royal Free London and University College London hospitals. He saw firsthand how administrative complexity gets in the way of patient care. De Paepe spent nearly four years at Via Transportation, building machine-learning systems for transit products. Now he's applying that expertise to healthcare infrastructure. "Realising our vision requires a deep technical understanding of constantly evolving payer rules," De Paepe says. "We are excited to build the infrastructure for AI to power a more efficient healthcare system. The opportunity extends far beyond any single workflow. We believe that a shared infrastructure layer can remove administrative burden for both payers and providers." ### What Penelope Actually Does Penelope converts the messy web of healthcare data into a single infrastructure layer. Healthcare companies can check coverage requirements, compare policies across payers, and streamline internal operations. The platform provides instant, structured access to payer medical coverage policies for the majority of insured Americans. It replaces custom, one-off connections and manual searches with a single connection any system can use. Right now, Penelope covers policies for over 200 million Americans, spanning more than 15,000 procedures and drug codes. ### The Bigger Picture This funding is part of a larger wave of investment in European healthcare infrastructure and AI tools aimed at reducing administrative workloads. - Stockholm-based Tandem Health raised €86.5 million - Berlin-based Recare secured up to €37 million - Barcelona-based Health Force raised €4.2 million for AI agents that handle hospital-insurance processes like prior-authorisation checks and claims - London-based Semble raised €34.7 million to scale its healthcare management platform - Flexzo AI secured €10.3 million for agentic healthcare workforce technology That's roughly €182.5 million across comparable rounds this year alone. ### What's Next The new funding will be used to create products that bring administrative efficiency to navigating payer requirements. Thoreau led the round, with participation from existing backers Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments (BHI), Twine Ventures, and Seedcamp. For anyone who's ever waited on hold with an insurance company or tried to decode a coverage policy, this can't come soon enough. Penelope's bet is simple: if you make the rules clear and accessible, everyone saves time and money. And with 200 million patients already covered by their platform, they're off to a running start.