TrialSpark raises $156MM Series C Funding led by Sam Altman and Lachy Groom

- Technology-driven pharma company that runs faster and cheaper clinical trials will use the funds to acquire promising candidate drugs to develop in-house

- TrialSpark aims to create a new kind of pharma company that can lower drug costs, expand access to treatments, and transform how we deliver new medicines to patients

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TrialSpark

Sep 30, 2021, 10:36 ET

NEW YORK, Sept. 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TrialSpark announced today that it has raised $156MM in Series C funding. Sam Altman and Lachy Groom led the round, with participation from new and existing investors, including Sequoia Capital (Series A lead), Thrive Capital (Series B lead), Casdin Capital, Dragoneer, Section 32, John Doerr, Spark Capital, Felicis Ventures, Sound Ventures, Arrowmark, and previous investors.

TrialSpark is building a next generation pharma company focused on bringing new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently. Despite the sweeping technological changes transforming biotech, bringing a new drug to market still takes longer than ten years and costs billions of dollars. The time and costs of development continue to increase, contributing to rising drug prices, inflated healthcare costs, and, ultimately, decreased access to treatments for patients.

TrialSpark's thesis is that in today's world, where the long and expensive clinical trial process is the biggest bottleneck in drug development, the competitive advantage you want as a pharma company is to be able to run clinical trials cheaper and faster.

TrialSpark is building a full stack pharma company that can develop drugs in-house faster and more efficiently than traditional pharma companies, driven by the belief that every day saved in the clinical trial process is one day sooner that a patient can access a life changing treatment.

"A lot of people complain about the mournful cost of bringing a new drug to market, but TrialSpark is actually doing something about it," said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. "Clinical trials are needlessly complex and expensive, and this directly contributes to the cost of drugs and keeps many promising drugs from ever coming to market. TrialSpark can fix this."

The company will use the Series C funds to acquire and/or partner on clinical stage pharmaceutical assets to develop through their in-house clinical trial platform, and also to invest in biotech companies with promising drug candidates ready for development. Countless excellent drug candidates sit on shelves due to the prohibitive cost and duration of traditional clinical trials, and TrialSpark is uniquely positioned to give those treatments a chance to reach patients.

Since its launch in 2016 by CEO Benjamine Liu, a Yale and Oxford-trained computational biologist and CTO Linhao Zhang, a veteran of Salesforce and Oscar Health, TrialSpark has built a clinical trial engine that offers enhanced study quality and speed through real-time access to data, innovative trial design, and operational agility. The TrialSpark tech platform integrates the front-end of trials (recruitment, eConsent, eSource) with the back-end (data management, monitoring, and biostats) to eliminate siloed study data. The result is 50% faster study timelines and 95% of patients unlocked who were previously unreached by clinical trials.

"Trialspark is building a new type of pharma company that has the potential to dramatically expand patient access to new treatments and align key stakeholders in drug development," said Kareem Zaki, General Partner at Thrive Capital. "We are excited to be on this consequential and ambitious journey with them."

The Series C funds will also be used to scale the TrialSpark team, which is growing rapidly across all departments in New York City and remotely. With a diverse team from across tech, life sciences, and pharma, TrialSpark is merging decades of deep subject matter expertise and tech-forward thinking to radically reimagine every part of the pharma value chain and work to bring treatments to patients faster than ever before.

"When we first met, Benjamine was clear about the journey he wanted to embark upon," said Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia Capital. "Nothing has changed. TrialSpark has scaled the foothills and the assault on the summit has begun."

About TrialSpark
TrialSpark is a technology-driven pharma company that runs end-to-end clinical trials, focused on bringing new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently. TrialSpark has built a technology platform that optimizes all aspects of a clinical trial, enabling more efficient trial design, faster trial completion, and higher trial data quality. TrialSpark in-licenses and co-develops drug programs through in-house development, joint ventures, and NewCos. TrialSpark is backed by leading investors such as Sam Altman, Lachy Groom, Michael Moritz, Casdin Capital, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Dragoneer, Section 32, John Doerr, Spark Capital, Felicis Ventures, Sound Ventures, Arrowmark, and previous investors.

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Related Links
https://www.trialspark.com

SOURCE TrialSpark