4G Clinical raises over $230mn growth equity from Goldman Sachs

4G Clinical, which makes software to speed up clinical trials, said on Tuesday it had raised over $230 million in growth equity from Goldman Sachs Asset Management to fund its global expansion and support growing demand for its products.

The company was founded in late 2015 by David Kelleher and Ed Tourtellotte, who have known each other since college, to accelerate clinical research by leveraging natural language processing, or NLP, a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that gives computers the ability to understand text and spoken words.

"Neither one of us was going to go back and get a PhD in biochemistry and discover a molecule, but the way that we're intending to help is through technology, through our business practices, you know, removing bottlenecks in the clinical trial process," Chief Executive Officer Kelleher told Reuters.

4G Clinical's offerings include Prancer RTSM, which helps speed up clinical trials and implement mid-study changes more efficiently; and 4C Supply, a supply-optimization tool that helps in preventing stock-outs and reduces drug waste.

The company, which is running 252 studies and has over 100 customers, competes with the likes of Oracle Corp, Medidata and Endpoint Clinical.

4G Clinical's revenue model includes an upfront payment of a fraction of the total cost of a study while it is being set up, followed by monthly maintenance fees over the duration of the study, Kelleher said.

The company will consider expanding its presence to Mainland China and to a few other spots in Europe, Kelleher added.

It currently has offices in cities including Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Dublin, Basel and Cologne outside of the United States and plans to open up a new office in Raleigh, Durham in North Carolina.