A healthcare AI company which claims to be used by more than 60% of NHS GPs will this week announce a funding injection led by one of Wall Street’s most prominent investors.

Sky News has learnt that Heidi, which promises to reduce doctors’ workloads by removing layers of bureaucracy from their daily tasks, will unveil a $65m (£48m) Series B fundraising which will value the company at $465m (£346m).

The round has been led by Point72 Private Investments, part of the investment empire of Steven Cohen, the billionaire asset management tycoon.

Existing investors including Blackbird, Headline and Latitude – which is part of the London-based venture capital group LocalGlobe – are also participating in the funding boost.

The raise brings the total sum of funding injected into Heidi since it was founded by a trio of Australian healthcare professionals to nearly $100m.

Heidi says its technology is now used to support more than 340,000 patient consultations each week in the UK.

It adds that organisations utilising it include One Care and Modality Partnership, the NHS’s largest GP “super-partnership”.

Heidi is also running pilot programmes with NHS Trusts across the North West London Acute Provider Collaborative – a group of hospitals serving a local population of approximately 2.2 million people – as well as One LSC, a collective of five NHS Trusts in Lancashire and South Cumbria which serves nearly 1.8 million people.

The company says its administrative aids have already saved British doctors 3 million hours annually by cutting paperwork and other bureaucracy.

It automates tasks such as clinical documentation, evidence search, and follow-up communications with patients.

More widely, Heidi claims to have supported more than 70 million patient consultations globally over the last 18 months, returning more than 18 million hours to frontline clinicians by streamlining administrative functions.

“It is untenable that healthcare demand continues to rise while clinical time continues to shrink,” Dr Thomas Kelly, the CEO and co-founder of Heidi, said.

“Building a sustainable healthcare system requires expanding clinical capacity without compromising clinician wellbeing or patient safety.”

The new funding will be used to accelerate Heidi’s expansion in the US, UK and Canada, including doubling its workforce in Britain to meet growing NHS demand.

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“What we’re witnessing with Heidi in the UK’s NHS isn’t just fast growth, it’s a clinician-led movement,” said Ferdi Sigona, a partner at Latitude.

“When doctors themselves are championing a tool so passionately – from individual practices to major NHS Trusts serving millions of patients – we know we’re backing a company with universal appeal across healthcare.”

Alongside the funding round, Heidi is also expected to announce the appointment of Paul Williamson, a former executive at the fintech Plaid, as chief revenue officer, and former Microsoft chief medical officer Dr Simon Kos to the same role.

Football chiefs are to bring in Wall Street’s best-known investment bank to explore options for financing the growth of women’s football in England.

Sky News has learnt that the board of the WSL are close to hiring Goldman Sachs to evaluate opportunities for raising new funding.

The project is at a very early stage, with further details on the potential outcome unclear this weekend.

The possibility of selling a stake in the WSL and the rebranded Championship – now known as WSL2 – has been explored in the past, and could be reviewed again as executives seek to capitalise on the sport’s profile.

The England women’s team made history during the summer by retaining their European Championships title after a penalty shootout in the Final against Spain.

In the last few months, both Chelsea and West Ham United have sold stakes in their women’s teams to external investors, with the former striking a deal with the husband of former tennis superstar Serena Williams.

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Deloitte, the accountancy firm which has been involved in a string of prominent recent sports deals, including the sale of stakes in the eight Hundred cricket franchises, is also said to be being lined up to work with the WSL Football board.

A WSL Football spokesman told Sky News: “Like any responsible business with ambition, WSL Football is working in collaboration with member clubs to explore long-term growth strategies that can accelerate the positive momentum within the women’s game.”

The spokesman declined to comment on the involvement of Goldman Sachs or Deloitte.

News of the review comes with the WSL and WSL2 seasons well underway.

On Friday night, Chelsea surrendered their 100% record at the top of the WSL when Manchester United came from behind to draw with the Londoners.

In the WSL2, Birmingham City and Charlton Athletic lead the race for promotion to the top tier.

The WSL Football board, which is chaired by media veteran Dawn Airey and run by chief executive Nikki Doucet, has secured a string of lucrative commercial and broadcast partnerships in the last 12 months.

These have included deals with British Gas and Nike, as well as a three-year title sponsorship extension with Barclays.

On the broadcast front, it struck a record £65m domestic TV rights agreement with Sky Sports – which shares a parent company with Sky News – and the BBC.

According to Deloitte’s annual review of football finance, the 12 WSL clubs generated aggregate revenue of £65m in 2023-24, a 34% increase on the prior season’s figure of £48m.

This rise was, according to the report, driven by revenue growth at Arsenal and Chelsea, although every top-flight club recorded double-digit increases in total revenue.

In attendance terms, WSL’s average and cumulative crowds in 2024-25 were slightly down, but this was offset by increases in attendances at second-tier matches, meaning that across the two divisions, last season was flat with an overall cumulative attendance of just over 1.1 million.

The impending appointment of Goldman comes four-and-a-half years after rival investment bank Rothschild was hired to undertake a similar review, with the sale of a stake to private equity investors under consideration for months before being abandoned.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is seeking a heavyweight outsider to run Britain’s main banking watchdog, with a senior Barclays executive expected to be among the top contenders for the job.

Sky News has learnt that the Treasury is to advertise the post of chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which oversees financial services firms such as banks and insurers, within days.

One source said the recruitment process could kick off as early as next week.

The process, which will run for several months, will lead to the appointment of a successor to Sam Woods, a long-serving official who has served two terms in the role.

This weekend, it emerged that Katharine Braddick, a former senior Treasury civil servant who joined Barclays in 2022, is expected to be among the applicants for the role.

Whitehall insiders said Ms Braddick would be a strong contender for the post if she decided to apply.

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A former director-general, financial services at the Treasury, Ms Braddick has been Barclays’ group head of strategic policy and advisor to the bank’s chief executive for three-and-a-half years.

Prior to the Treasury, she worked at the Financial Services Authority and was heavily involved in political negotiations on financial services legislation relating to Brexit.

Barclays declined to comment on Ms Braddick’s behalf on Saturday.

In response to an enquiry from Sky News, a Treasury spokesperson said: “Growing the economy is the Chancellor’s number one mission.

“Every regulator has a part to play by regulating for growth not just risk.”

The chancellor is said to be keen to identify candidates from outside Britain’s existing regulatory set-up to head the PRA.

A small number of internal candidates is thought to include David Bailey, the Bank of England’s executive director for prudential policy.

Ms Reeves’s apparent desire for an outsider comes amid a wider push for Britain’s economic watchdogs to remove red tape and reorient themselves towards growth-focused policies.

Earlier this year, Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, was appointed to a second term in charge following intensive discussions about the body’s five-year strategy.

Since then, both the FCA and PRA have removed rules relating to diversity and inclusion in the financial sector, while the former abandoned a plan to ‘name and shame’ companies which were the subject of enforcement investigations.

The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) was abolished earlier this year as part of the government’s drive to reduce unnecessary regulation.

The search for the next PRA boss will get underway less than two months before the chancellor delivers an autumn Budget in which she is expected to have to raise tens of billions of pounds through additional tax rises.

Mr Woods’ next move will be closely watched in the City.

He has been seen as a potential candidate to succeed Andrew Bailey when the Bank of England governor’s term runs out in 2028, although it is unclear whether he covets the job.

As CEO of the PRA, Mr Woods is also a deputy governor of the Bank of England, a member of the Bank’s Court of Directors, and a director of the FCA.

The chancellor has shown a willingness to recruit from outside the Treasury, appointing Bank of America investment banking veteran Jim O’Neil as second permanent secretary to the Treasury earlier this year.

Mr O’Neil had also served as the head of UK Financial Investments, the agency set up to manage taxpayers’ stakes in Britain’s bailed-out banks.