Sword CEO Calls IPO ‘Boring’ for Now After $4 Billion Valuation

Sword Health’s 41-year-old founder isn’t shy about his ambitions — or his lack of interest in taking the conventional path to the public markets.

“Right now, running a publicly listed company sounds terribly boring,” said Virgílio Bento, who is also chief executive officer of the digital health startup valued at $4 billion in a June funding round. “We want to build a trillion-dollar company that really wants to change health care all over the world.”

Speaking this week from Athens, where Sword Health just signed an agreement with Greece’s health ministry to use artificial intelligence in the national health-care system, ...