NEW YORK & ATHENS, Greece & BASEL, Switzerland–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Aug. 10 2021 – Intelligencia, whose AI-driven software platform enables pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to revolutionize the drug development process and reduce risk, has raised $12M in order to continue to expand its product offering and customer base. Healthtech investor MTIP led the oversubscribed Series A round, joined by several of the company’s existing investors, including Big Pi Ventures and Synetro Group. ZS, a global professional services firm that leverages deep analytics and biopharmaceutical industry expertise to help companies and their customers thrive, has also participated in this round.

The company’s founders, Dimitrios Skaltsas and Vangelis Vergetis, met while at McKinsey & Company, and have spent more than a decade in the intersection of clinical development, data science, and technology solutions. Forbes recently included Intelligencia in their list of “America’s top 50 most promising AI companies.”

Intelligencia is an AI-driven technology company that focuses on minimizing the risk of drug development and enabling external innovation. It currently works with top-10 and mid-size global biopharmaceutical companies, smaller biotechs, prominent research centers, as well as investors in the biopharmaceutical space. With a focus on increasing R&D productivity, the company offers a suite of decision-making support solutions that enable its customers to minimize the risk of drug development, as well as streamline productivity and lower cost. Its platform allows customers to:

• Accurately and efficiently assess the probability of success of pipeline drugs, with supporting rationale;
• Unlock the optimal trial design, with comprehensive benchmarks linked to clinical trial success;
• Identify and prioritize additional potential indications to explore for each asset;
• Guide business development decisions by quickly and objectively comparing the attractiveness of external assets, based on a variety of features, including the underlying biology, clinical and regulatory data, and company characteristics; and
• Identify emerging technologies and scientific breakthroughs to gain competitive insights and enable identification of “the next big thing” early.

The company currently employs more than 40 people across its headquarters in New York and the R&D center in Athens, Greece. The proceeds from this round will expand Intelligencia’s R&D team in Athens, grow its sales and customer success teams in the US and in Europe, as well as allow it to work even more closely with customers and partners as they seek to incorporate their private/proprietary data into the company’s models.

“As we continue to aggressively expand Intelligencia’s business, we are privileged to have the support and guidance of industry veterans and company builders alike,” says Vangelis Vergetis. “Our aim has always been to make a difference when it comes to the incredibly risky business of drug development, and this funding round will allow us to continue to expand our product offering, our proprietary data, and our customer base.”

Danchen Zhao, who joins the Board of Directors on behalf of MTIP, said: “We see Intelligencia as an innovation leader in ML-based predictive analytics, offering actionable insights to life science organizations. We are impressed by their complementary team of data scientists, biologists and software engineers, that together continuously improve and expand their platform.” Dr. Christoph Kausch continued: “At MTIP, we see great potential in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the Life Science vertical. Intelligencia’s platform enables faster and more efficient drug development and helps to improve the success rate of novel therapies. This investment aligns with our philosophy of supporting innovation that enhances patients’ quality of life and life expectations across therapeutic areas.”

“Increasingly, innovation in science and R&D requires technical expertise,” said Pratap Khedkar, CEO of ZS. “We are committed to supporting and partnering with innovative companies like Intelligencia to drive the adoption of next-generation technical capabilities – and robust data-driven decision making – for the biopharmaceutical industry.”

Dimitrios Skaltsas, talking about the team behind building a software product that is centered around specific customer needs, says: “Our fuel has been our unique knowledge graph, built on expertly curated data and ontologies. Equally, what has been crucial and much rewarding in our journey is bringing together a high-octane interdisciplinary team with both hard and soft skills, as well as constantly evolving with the direct input from our users at major organizations and cutting-edge biotech companies.”