Zahid Mahmood is Co-Founder and CTO at Anterior, an AI-powered healthcare administration platform that automates prior authorization and clinical workflows for health plans. He leads engineering efforts that have achieved 99% system accuracy and a 74% reduction in administrative processing times.

Zahid holds an MSc in Engineering Management from UCL and began coding at age 11. He previously founded Muslim Tech Fest, Europe's largest conference for frontier technology innovation, and a VC-backed startup for AI-powered line hopping that sunset in December 2022.

Zahid co-founded Anterior (formerly Co:Helm) in 2022 with Dr. Abdel Mahmoud to tackle the nearly $1 trillion administrative burden in U.S. healthcare. The company raised $3.2M seed funding from Sequoia Capital in 2023 and $20M Series A from NEA in June 2024.

In February 2026, Anterior closed a $40M funding round led by FPV and Kinnevik, bringing total capital raised to $64M. The platform now supports organizations covering 50 million lives and has achieved 99.24% clinical accuracy validated by KLAS Research.

Anterior's AI clinical co-pilot Florence has reduced clinical review cycles by 75% for enterprise customers and driven staff satisfaction above 90%. The company has expanded production deployments across major U.S. health plans including Geisinger Health Plan and built strategic integrations with HealthEdge.