Rivia raises $15M to build AI engine for clinical trial data — TFN

Drug growth is going through mounting financial and regulatory strain. Trade returns have fallen from round 11% a decade in the past to roughly 3% immediately, whereas the variety of therapies efficiently reaching the market stays comparatively low.

On the similar time, scientific trials have grow to be considerably extra advanced.

Information volumes have elevated by greater than 400% over the previous decade, whereas many biotech and pharmaceutical corporations nonetheless depend on fragmented spreadsheets and legacy software program programs to handle important workflows.

Right here’s the place Swiss startup Rivia believes synthetic intelligence may play a key position in addressing that problem.

The Zurich-based firm has raised $15 million in a Sequence A funding spherical led by Earlybird, with participation from Defiant and current buyers Speedinvest, Amino Collective, and Nina Capital.

The funding will help product growth, staff enlargement, and worldwide progress, significantly in the US.

Constructing a unified information engine for trials

Based in Zurich and led by Erik Scalfaro, Rivia is growing an information platform designed to unify and construction scientific trial information from a number of sources in actual time.

The system integrates 1000’s of heterogeneous information recordsdata and applies trial-specific scientific logic utilizing a library of reusable configurations.

This course of produces harmonised datasets that may feed instantly into operational evaluation workflows utilized by scientific trial groups.

The corporate says the platform helps automate duties which can be at the moment dealt with manually, similar to validation, reconciliation, and monitoring of trial information.

These actions typically require 1000’s of hours of human effort throughout giant trials.

Based on the corporate, its expertise is already being utilized in about 40 scientific trials throughout the US and Europe.

The announcement comes at a degree the place the corporate reported fourfold progress in annual recurring income throughout 2025.’

Constructing AI brokers for scientific workflows

On prime of its information platform, Rivia is growing a brand new suite of AI brokers meant to help trial operators instantly inside their workflows.

The primary agent, known as Spark, converts pure language prompts into clinical-grade information visualisations.

Extra brokers are being deployed to watch information high quality, detect potential trial deviations earlier, and assist prioritise operational choices.

The corporate’s broader aim is to switch giant parts of handbook evaluation processes with automated programs that may scale throughout trials.

Rivia says the strategy may cut back the price of scientific trials by as much as 50% by changing repetitive operational work with automated programs.

Erik Scalfaro, CEO and Co-Founding father of Rivia, stated: “Two years in the past, we made a deliberate choice. We began with the scaffolding, constructing the foundational information engine earlier than turning to brokers. Immediately, that vertical sequence of knowledge engine to brokers provides us a structural benefit. We’ve seen biotechs run world trials on Rivia and ship measurable outcomes, from stopping points that may’ve price tens of millions to gaining earlier readability on which sufferers profit most. With each new trial, our ontology library compounds, making our system extra highly effective over time. Our aim is now to assist scientific trials scale by programs and AI slightly than incremental human effort. Our Sequence A allows us to speed up this subsequent section of progress, and we’re proud to have the backing of Earlybird as we scale.”

“Medical trials are among the many most advanced and dear workflows in healthcare, but a lot of the infrastructure stays fragmented and handbook. Rivia has constructed a real intelligence layer for scientific operations, unifying information and embedding brokers instantly into high-impact workflows. We consider this strategy has the potential to basically enhance trial execution, decreasing prices whereas rising pace and information integrity. We’re excited to help Erik and the staff as they scale this new agentic basis for world drug growth,” shares Christian Nagel, Companion & Co-Founder at Earlybird.

“After we first backed Erik and Tiago, they took on the toughest problem first — constructing the information and infrastructure engine to energy the world’s most advanced scientific trials. They’ve delivered and extra, turning into mission-critical to their prospects. We’re excited to maintain backing them as they layer agentic intelligence on that basis and construct the platform no scientific trial can run with out,” feedback Andrea Zitna, Lead Companion for Well being & Bio at Speedinvest.