Clinical trials can take years to move from an initial research idea to the first participant, and much of that time can be consumed by fragmented documentation, repeated reviews and decisions spread across different teams. Cori Clinical is trying to change that process by putting the information behind a trial into one structured system. The AI startup has raised $4 million in seed funding to expand its platform and help clinical teams move from study design to execution with less administrative friction.
The round was led by Breega, with participation from Enzo, Heartfelt, Together Ventures and Bynd. Cori was founded by CEO Jorn Jansen Schoonhoven and CTO Patricio Fernandez Weisson, who are building what the company describes as an AI guided workspace for clinical development.
Bringing Trial Information Together
Clinical development involves hundreds of connected decisions covering study design, patient eligibility, endpoints, assessments, budgets, regulatory requirements and operational planning. Traditionally, much of this information can sit across separate documents, systems and teams.
Cori’s approach is to create a single, versioned record of the trial, known as a living blueprint. The platform combines a company’s own knowledge, including previous protocols, trials, budgets, standard operating procedures and templates, with external regulatory and clinical information.
External intelligence can include curated trial registries, regulatory guidance and information from agencies including the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency and UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
One Blueprint, Multiple Workflows
The platform is designed so that a change made to the trial design can flow through the documents and operational plans connected to it.
Cori’s platform can support protocol development, informed consent forms, statistical analysis plans, site budgets and regulatory submission packages from the same structured record. Its Knowledge Hub is versioned and mapped to CDISC USDM standards, allowing information to remain connected rather than being repeatedly copied between documents.
The company says this can help clinical teams identify gaps and inconsistencies earlier. Instead of discovering operational or documentation problems after a protocol appears complete, teams can see design, cost and execution implications while the trial is still being planned.
AI Guided, Not AI Controlled
A central part of Cori’s strategy is keeping humans responsible for clinical decisions.
The company’s platform is designed to author documents, surface information and identify gaps, while clinicians and other members of the trial team remain responsible for reviewing and approving the output. Cori says that when the system cannot ground a section in available information, it asks for additional input rather than inventing an answer.
This human in the loop model is particularly important in clinical research, where decisions can involve trade offs between patient burden, scientific objectives, regulatory requirements, timelines and cost.
Early Customer Traction
Cori is already working with sponsors and clinical research organisations, including two of the world’s five largest enterprise CROs, according to the company.
Its platform is also being used by Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, where it has supported clinical trials in neurosurgery and neuro oncology. The company is targeting both pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and CROs, with its CRO offering designed to use previous trial delivery data to improve bidding, budgeting and operational planning.
Building for Clinical Scale
The startup’s founders bring experience across artificial intelligence, data science and clinical development. Chief Clinical Officer Dr Emma Ogburn has more than two decades of experience across global clinical trials, including work spanning industry, academia and different therapeutic areas.
Cori says the new funding will be used to expand its delivery capacity, grow the team and deepen the clinical and regulatory intelligence embedded in the platform.
The company is also building its infrastructure around the security requirements of healthcare organisations. Cori says it is ISO/IEC 27001 certified, GxP aligned and supports regional hosting in the EU, US and UK, while customer data is kept isolated and is not used to train models.
With fresh seed capital and growing customer adoption, Cori Clinical is positioning AI not as a replacement for clinical expertise, but as the connective layer that allows teams to make decisions once, keep them consistent and spend more time on the science behind new treatments.
