Source: Fortune
Summary
Perceptic, a startup founded by former Palantir executives, has emerged from stealth with a $12 million seed funding round led by Accel. The company is building an end-to-end AI platform for drug development, handling everything from drug discovery to clinical trial design. Perceptic’s software is already being used by multiple top-tier pharmaceutical companies, including CSL. The company aims to unify workflows and data across multiple departments, rather than offering standalone tools.
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Perceptic’s founders, who spent nearly seven years at Palantir, are pitching their platform as the “connective tissue” between discrete AI tools and proprietary internal and external data. The company is targeting three areas of pharma R&D: scouting external assets, helping pharma companies choose indications for clinical trials, and building a “data foundation” for clinical trial design. Perceptic’s platform is “infrastructure and model agnostic,” allowing customers to plug in their own data, hardware, and AI models.
The startup’s approach reflects a broader pattern in enterprise AI, in which platforms increasingly unify workflows and data across multiple departments. Perceptic’s AI system allows customers to trace every claim back to its source, addressing concerns about AI hallucinations.
Perceptic has a “right to win” from Europe, given the concentration of pharmaceutical talent in Switzerland and the U.K. The company plans to expand its presence in the United States.
Perceptic’s seed funding will go into engineering and growing its customer base, with the goal of scaling out its platform.
When a startup promises to unify workflows and data, it’s often a sign that the industry is ripe for disruption.
Author: Evan Null
