McLean AI health care startup raises $111M in Series A funding

McLean-based Zephyr AI has raised $111 million in a Series A funding round, the health care technology startup announced March 13.

The round included participation from about 30 investors, including Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly & Co., Jeff Skoll, and Epiq Capital Group, according to a news release and a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from the company. The raise started in October 2023.

Founded in 2020, Zephyr AI is leveraging artificial intelligence algorithms and tools to develop products and solutions supporting patients and providers and fueling research in the areas of oncology and cardiometabolic disease.

“The U.S. has the highest rate of avoidable cancer and cardiometabolic-related deaths among any high-income country. We must do better,” Grant Verstandig, Zephyr AI’s cofounder and executive chairman, said in a statement. “At Zephyr AI, we are harnessing the power of AI to extract novel insights to better define patient stratification and response predictions as well as improve federation of real-world data. With our world-class team, and the support of this investor group, we are deploying one of the largest clinicogenomic [clinical genomic] datasets that has unprecedented breadth across disease states and data partners. Collectively, we are now well-positioned to support our mission of democratizing precision medicine, enhancing both the speed and success of clinical trials.”

The funds raised will enable Zephyr AI to increase its analytical speed and fortify its training and validation sets, as well as support expansion of the company’s scientific and commercial teams to expedite delivery to the market.

The startup had two abstracts accepted for publication at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in April in San Diego.

“We are excited to be part of this growing ecosystem of AI-enabled drug development and welcome the opportunity to attend [the annual meeting], where we will engage with the scientific community and present some of our emerging scientific insights from our platform,” Jeff Sherman, Zephyr AI co-founder, interim CEO and chief technology officer, said in a statement.

In March 2022, Zephyr AI raised $18.5 million in a seed round.