TORONTO — French firm Alan is recruiting doctors in Canada for a virtual care service and preparing to launch its AI health-care helper in the country next year, as it takes aim at what CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve says are significant margins in the local insurance business.

“There is a lot of room, in fact, to bring competitiveness into the market,” he said in an interview at Alan’s downtown Toronto office on Monday. Growing here is part of Alan’s big expansion push. The firm plans to launch in four new countries over the next year and a half, after raising $780 million last month from investors including the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

Launched in October 2016, Alan sells group benefits plans to employers, and offers their workers additional health services. It charges clients a subscription fee per user, and says it doesn’t make money on insurance premiums. Alan also doesn’t sell via brokers or agents, a primary channel for many large underwriters, instead getting employers to sign up directly on its site. 

“First, customers look at price,” Samuelian-Werve said. He claimed health insurers in Canada have quite high margins and distributors charge relatively steep fees compared to other major markets, creating room for new entrants like Alan. 

Alan also touts its technology systems and health-care services as a selling point, all delivered via its app. It uses AI to help process expense claims, issuing most reimbursements within minutes, and providing plainer-language explanations for rejections. The app also lets users quickly check which drugs and services are covered. In Europe, Alan offers virtual appointments with specialists and more preventative care; it can schedule blood tests or a clinic visit.

The firm covers 1.2 million people worldwide, including just over 4,000 workers in Canada who access Alan via their employers’ benefits plans. The company claimed it was tracking at €804 million in revenue on an annualized basis after the first quarter.

Many Canadian insurers and benefits providers already offer many or all of the same features as Alan. Sun Life customers, for example, can submit claims through its app and access virtual care through its Dialogue subsidiary. Samuelian-Werve claims Alan offers a better user experience because it has a single technology stack rather than multiple systems, and because it uses so much AI.

That includes Mo, originally launched as a chatbot in the French market in November 2024. The tool now fields both customer service issues and health-care-related questions. Plenty of people already look to Google or ChatGPT to tell them why they’re hurting, which workouts to do or what to eat. 

But Mo knows “your historical data” a lot better, Samuelian-Werve claimed, “so it can be a lot more personalized.” The tool can, for example, generate tailored exercise regimens. It’s also tied into Alan’s telehealth system, handing users off to doctors when they need prescriptions or real medical advice, with a full record of the chatbot conversation.

Alan plans to launch the AI tool in Canada, “likely in 2027,” Samuelian-Werve said. Alan rolled out virtual mental health services in Ontario in February, connecting users to licensed therapists. 

The firm’s fitness and wellness features are part of a broader focus on preventative actions to avoid worse outcomes. Alan picked Canada as its third international market—after Belgium and Spain—because it has similar issues with long waitlists for medical procedures and growing rates of chronic disease. “The way our health-care system has been designed is only for reactive, curative care,” said Samuelian-Werve. “We see the cost exploding in every single geography.” 

Insurers and health-care systems are also grappling with the growing popularity of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. Samuelian-Werve said he doesn’t believe the drugs’ popularity will reduce demand for Alan’s preventative features. “It needs to be combined with behavioural change programmes, where we are very strong.”

To fund its geographic expansion plans and technology roadmap, Alan raised the new financing last month at an $8.9-billion valuation. Previous investors include Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Wealthsimple CEO Mike Katchen. Samuelian-Werve said Ontario Teachers’ helped with Alan’s Canadian launch by explaining the local market and doing user research on its behalf.

The expansion comes as insurers face growing scrutiny over their AI use, particularly in the U.S., where mistakes by automated claims systems have triggered customer backlash. Alan’s AI health-care helper operates in an even more sensitive context. Mo is powered by 20 different agents, said Samuelian-Werve. A couple are designed to make it safe by assessing every conversation and escalating anything that looks iffy to its medical team for review within a quarter of an hour.

Samuelian-Werve also helped start French AI champion Mistral, and remains on the board. Alan uses AI models from several providers, and has trained its own mini-systems for tasks like anonymizing personal information or ensuring its chatbot can handle medical wording.