Zephyr AI taps new CEO

McLean-based health care tech startup Zephyr AI announced last week that it has appointed Allen Chao as its new CEO and acquired cancer data company Aster Insights.

Chao — who has over 40 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry — succeeds Jeff Sherman, Zephyr’s co-founder and chief technology officer, who served as CEO in an interim capacity for more than a year. Chao founded Watson Pharmaceuticals in 1984 and served as its CEO and chairman until 2008.

During his time with Watson, Chao grew it from a small drug development company in Corona, California, to a global enterprise with $2.8 billion in annual revenue.

He has spent much of his career supporting cancer research and established the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UC Irvine in 1994.

“As a longtime champion of the team at Zephyr, I’m excited to be joining the company at a time when our technology puts our products squarely at the forefront of precision medicine,” said Chao in a statement.

The company also stated that Aster Insights, a Tampa, Florida-based company that provides oncology data, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Zephyr. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Aster supports Total Cancer Care, the world’s largest and longest-running observational cancer study with more than 400,000 lifetime-consented patients.

Zephyr says its AI-driven platform, combined with Aster’s data, will expand its oncology data capabilities and help lead to expedited drug development, smarter clinical trial design and improved care delivery.

“This acquisition deepens Zephyr’s data advantage and reinforces our commitment to using AI and real-world evidence to unlock more effective, personalized therapies,” said Chao in a statement. “We believe the combination of Zephyr’s platform and Aster Insights’ unparalleled data access positions us to deliver differentiated insights to our life science partners and, ultimately, better patient outcomes.”

The companies have already begun integration efforts. Zephyr did not provide information on the number of its employees.

Founded in 2020, Zephyr AI develops artificial intelligence-powered algorithms that can glean insights from health care data. Last year, the company raised $111 million in a Series A funding round from about 30 investors, including Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly & Co., Jeff Skoll, and Epiq Capital Group. In March 2022, Zephyr AI raised $18.5 million in a seed round.