Memorial Hermann Health System

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health announced it is partnering with pharma giant Eli Lilly and Company to form a new venture capital fund, dubbed the Biotech Ecosystem Venture Fund. The aim of the fund is to drive transformative progress in healthcare by investing in therapeutic platforms and cutting-edge technology companies. The fund will be managed by a16z Bio + Health and deploy up to $500 million to invest in companies at all stages, from company creation to growth. Additionally, the fund will concentrate on advancing the development of new medicines, enabling novel modality platforms and scaling emerging health technologies. According to Andreessen, the fund will take a "long-term view" to allow disruptive companies to realize the full potential of new biological science, engineering technologies and AI capabilities. The fund also aims to promote a technology ecosystem of "ambitious bio + health entrepreneurs and innovators." "The Biotech Ecosystem Venture Fund seeks to enable visionary founders to create enduring solutions in biotech and healthcare," Dr. Vineeta Agarwala, general partner at a16z Bio + Health, said in a statement. "Combining our strengths as organizations will empower founders with not only the venture backing needed to advance groundbreaking technologies, but also the resources needed to strategically select the most promising application areas for these platforms." Agarwala added: "The creation of this new fund signifies a shared passion and commitment with Lilly to deliver truly meaningful change in our ability to treat and care for people living with disease." In a statement, Andreessen noted that the fund will leverage the strengths of a16z in sourcing, building and scaling bio + health companies, while utilizing Lilly’s deep expertise in life science research and development. Lilly will be able to provide additional resources to the companies, including Catalyze360TM, which is a specialized support structure for biotech startups that includes Lilly Ventures, Lilly Gateway Labs and Lilly ExplorR&D. "Catalyze360 was created to accelerate the success of emerging biotech startups by providing access to people, tools, capabilities and expertise that is traditionally hard for early-stage companies to reach," Nisha Nanda, group vice president at Catalyze360, said in a statement. "With the Biotech Ecosystem Fund, we can further scale our work to empower entrepreneurs as they work to bring transformative therapies to patients faster." THE LARGER TREND In 2024, Andreessen Horowitz-backed knownwell, a hybrid weight-inclusive primary and metabolic-care provider, announced the opening of a brick-and-mortar clinic in Plano, Texas, that will treat patients virtually throughout Texas. During an interview with MobiHealthNews in October, Agarwala of (a16z) Bio + Health, which led the company's $20 million Series A funding round, was asked why her company backed knownwell. "Usually, when we invest in any startup, we're early-stage investors and care a lot about the team. Having a really rock star team that is capable of executing in a complex healthcare landscape, that's capable of growing, hiring, delivering clinical care, that we're all going to always feel proud about, are the first filters for us on any business, and this team passed that bar with flying colors," Agarwala said. That same year, Infinitus Systems scored $51.5 million in Series C funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total raise to $102.9 million. Andreessen and Memorial Hermann Health System joined existing investors GV (Google Ventures), Coatue and Kleiner Perkins. Alchemy, a company that helps develop and scale in-house pharmacy programs focused on HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) patient populations, closed $31 million in seed financing led by a16z Bio + Health. Professional basketball player and investor Earvin "Magic" Johnson participated in the round alongside Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, Banc of California and existing investors Twine Ventures, Springbank and AlleyCorp. In 2024, Lilly Digital Health and Lilly Centre for Clinical Pharmacology (LCCP), a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company, created a SGD$42 million digital health innovation hub in Singapore. The aim of the hub was to increase the research and development of AI-powered digital health technologies, and is part of a five-year plan, supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board. That same year, Genetic Leap teamed up with Eli Lilly to develop genetic medicine therapeutics. The partnership expanded on a pilot program utilizing Genetic Leap's RNA-targeted AI platform, designed to produce oligonucleotide drugs counter to targets chosen by Lilly in crucial therapeutic areas. Lilly will provide Genetic Leap with as much as $409 million dollars in up-front commercial, development, regulatory and clinical payments, and tiered royalties.

Carta Healthcare, which offers AI technology that helps abstract data faster, announced they acquired Realyze Intelligence, a portfolio company of UPMC Enterprises. The companies aim to expand and strengthen their combined AI platforms. Realyze Intelligence platform leverages AI to match patients to clinical trials to expedite research and lower costs, while providing patients with the newest breakthroughs in care. With a focus on oncology, Realyze Intelligence examines structured and unstructured data in EHRs to identify ideal patients for clinical trials and other research studies. Additionally, Realyze Intelligence’s clinician-trained AI can assemble suitable cohorts in seconds rather than the hours or days the process takes when performed manually. Meanwhile, Carta Healthcare’s platform applies AI to structured and unstructured data to reduce the time and price for data abstraction. Carta Healthcare and Realyze Intelligence anticipate that their combined technologies’ "powerful" automation can offer faster insights and considerably reduced labor demands for clinical data registry abstraction, research and internal clinical quality performance programs in oncology, cardiovascular health and other specialty areas. Moreover, the expectation is that Carta Healthcare’s platform, added to Realyze Intelligence’s AI technology, has the potential to significantly expand the feasibility of trials and other research while increasing data abstraction for cancer and other clinical data registries with expert clinician oversight. "We believe data is the single most important ingredient to improve healthcare," Brent Dover, CEO of Carta Healthcare, said in a statement. "From clinical trials to clinical registries, clinicians face insurmountable amounts of data ripe with valuable information to improve care practices and patient outcomes. We are inspired by Realyze Intelligence’s shared ability to use clinician-trained AI and a human-in-the-loop approach to maximize insights from clinical data, for clinical trials and cancer registries." Aaron Brauser, founder and CEO of Realyze Intelligence, pointed out that health systems and pharmaceutical companies invest billions each year to identify and enroll patients for clinical trials, a process that is costly, labor-intensive and time-consuming. "High-quality, timely data is essential for accurately identifying eligible patients, yet much of it remains trapped in EHRs and other systems. We are excited to revolutionize clinical trial matching and reuse the data to enhance research, optimize care pathways and improve patient outcomes with Carta Healthcare," Brauser said in a statement. THE LARGER TREND In 2023, Carta Healthcare announced the closing of $25 million series B financing, with additional investments from Memorial Hermann Health System and UnityPoint Health. The additional funding followed a $20 million Series B financing round that was announced in November 2022. That round included investors Paramark Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures, American College of Cardiology, Asset Management Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, Mass General Brigham, Maverick Ventures Investment Fund and Storm Ventures. In 2022, Carta Healthcare became a certified software vendor for the Society of Thoracic Surgeons/American College of Cardiology Traanscather Valve Therapy Registry. That announcement came in the wake of a successful $20 million Series B fundraising round. In April, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center applied machine learning and large language models to augment the manual curation of cancer data elements using the Realyze Intelligence platform. In February, Realyze Intelligence earned a position among the inaugural class of start-up companies selected for the CancerX Startup Accelerator, part of the Biden administration Cancer Moonshot program that aims to cut the U.S. cancer death rate in half within the next 25 years. The competitive program gave Realyze Intelligence, which uses AI to match cancer patients to clinical trials, access to connections and collaborations with leading cancer organizations to help reinforce its technology.

Infinitus Systems, which utilizes AI to automate manual healthcare-related phone calls, announced it scored $51.5 million in Series C funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total raise to $102.9 million. Andreessen and Memorial Hermann Health System joined existing investors GV (Google Ventures), Coatue and Kleiner Perkins. Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joined the company's board of directors. WHAT IT DOES The San Francisco-based company's AI-enabled platform, FastTrack, utilizes AI agents and copilots to talk to payers about claims processing and collect information on patients' prior authorizations, benefit verification and prescription follow-ups. Infinitus' AI draws from "a vast knowledge graph of payor intelligence gathered from over four million calls and counting," the company said in a statement. It knows which numbers to call, can navigate IVR systems and waits on hold for users until a live payor agent answers the phone. The company touts that its solution can use LLMs for reasoning and extraction through a coordination layer that restricts conversations to specific topics, putting concerns of AI hallucinations to rest. "The potential for AI to revolutionize the healthcare industry is immense, and Infinitus is well positioned to help customers navigate this time of change," Kupor said in a statement. "We believe in Infinitus’s vision and are confident that their innovative solutions, like FastTrack, will continue to disrupt the industry and deliver significant value to both their customers and the broader healthcare ecosystem, safely and securely driving efficiency and enabling healthcare providers to focus more on patient care." MARKET SNAPSHOT Daisy Wolf, investing partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), sat down with MobiHealthNews in August for its Investment Series to discuss a16z's enthusiasm for healthcare technology and the type of tech that will impact the sector. "The [healthcare] industry is the last industry that has call centers of people who are faxing and answering phones and scheduling appointments manually," Wolf said. "If you look at the developing world, it went straight from cash and mobile payments and leapfrogged over credit cards. We see that opportunity happening in healthcare right now, where we're going to go straight from humans to AI and leapfrogging over traditional enterprise SaaS." Over the last couple of weeks, Andreessen has announced several investments in digital health companies. One is Alchemy, a company that helps develop and scale in-house pharmacy programs focused on HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) patient populations. a16z led Alchemy's $31 million seed financing round alongside professional basketball player turned investor Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, Banc of California, Twine Ventures, Springbank and AlleyCorp. Counsel Health, a virtual healthcare practice focused on message-based care, also announced its launch, with $11 million in seed funding in a round led by a16z. Floodgate Fund, Asymmetric Capital Partners, Pear VC and numerous healthcare startup founders also participated in the round.