Cori Clinical Raises $4M Seed to Streamline Clinical Trial Design and Reduce Delays

Cori Clinical, an AI-powered platform for clinical trials, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Breega, with additional backing from Enzo, Heartfelt, Together Ventures and Bynd. The company is tackling the fragmented workflows and disconnected information sources that often make clinical trial design and set-up complex and time-consuming.

Founded by Jorn Jansen Schoonhoven (CEO) and Patricio Fernández (CTO), Cori has developed an AI workspace that combines an organisation’s knowledge from previous clinical trials with external intelligence from trial registries, regulatory guidance and public sources. These include information from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Cori’s platform enables clinical teams to turn an initial trial brief into a complete protocol, regulatory submission package and operational plan using up-to-date regulatory guidance. Instead of focusing on a single document or workflow, the platform creates what Cori calls a “living blueprint” for each trial. This allows teams to compare proposed study designs with previous experience and external evidence, identify potential risks and connect design decisions with budgets, timelines and operational requirements.

According to Cori, this approach can help reduce duplicated work, unnecessary rework, costs and delays while giving clinical teams greater visibility throughout the trial-planning process.

Using internal modelling based on average trial set-up costs, historical amendment rates and the time required to enrol the first participant, Cori estimates that its technology could lower average trial set-up costs by at least 33%. In an internal evaluation benchmarked against amendments made to completed trials, the company’s AI reviewer identified 82% of protocol errors that were classified as avoidable.

Cori is already working with two of the world’s five largest enterprise clinical research organisations (CROs). Its customer base also includes Erasmus MC, the academic medical centre and university hospital in Rotterdam, where the platform has supported two clinical trials focused on neurosurgery and neuro-oncology.

Jansen Schoonhoven said clinical trial design involves a series of interconnected decisions, yet the knowledge needed to make those decisions is often scattered across previous studies, teams, internal systems and documents.

Cori brings that intelligence together into a living blueprint, so teams can make better-informed decisions before avoidable problems become delays, so the science never waits on the process.

The team has also welcomed Dr Emma Ogburn as Chief Clinical Officer. She brings first-hand experience of the challenges associated with lengthy clinical trial start-up timelines.

Cori plans to use the new seed funding to expand its delivery capabilities, grow its team and strengthen the regulatory and clinical intelligence built into its platform. The funding will also help the company build on its growing customer base and establish broader commercial partnerships with clinical research organisations (CROs) and pharmaceutical companies.