Press release: SOPHiA Genetics the pioneering Data-Driven Medicine company, raises $30m from UK’s Balderton Capital

London, England, 13th September 2017

• Artificial Intelligence analysis of big data for hospitals is leading to faster and better diagnosis for patients with cancer and congenital disorders
• SOPHiA GENETICS’ AI is already being used by over 300 hospitals across 53 countries and has analysed the genomic profiles of over 125,000 patients. Their software gives any clinician in the world access to leading genomic expertise
• Latest fundraising will enable SOPHiA GENETICS to build its global presence, as it builds the world’s largest clinical genomics community

SOPHiA GENETICS, one of the world’s foremost companies in the field of applying artificial intelligence to genomic analysis, has raised $30 million in funding from UK-based venture capital fund Balderton Capital. Balderton Capital is joined in the latest funding round by 360o Capital Partners and previous investors including British tech star Mike Lynch’s Invoke Capital and Alychlo, started by Mark Coucke, the Belgian pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

SOPHiA GENETICS was founded in 2011 by experts from Stanford University and Switzerland to pioneer the fast-emerging field of Data-Driven Medicine. The company combines expertise in genomics, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence and data privacy. The company’s artificial intelligence, SOPHiA, accelerates diagnostics in oncology, hereditary cancer, metabolic disorders, paediatrics and cardiology through Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS).

The company provides a universal solution which hospitals anywhere in the world can use to analyse data created by a Next-Generation DNA Sequencer (NGS). To date more than 330 hospitals in 53 countries are using SOPHiA GENETICS’ Software-as-a-Service platform, SOPHiA DDM, to diagnose more than 8,000 patients per month. The more genomic profiles SOPHiA AI analyses the smarter the AI becomes enabling faster and better diagnosis results.

The field of genomics is exploding, with hundreds of genomic diagnostics now available to identify everything from rare hereditary diseases to diabetes, and the power of NGS sequencers improving quicker than Moore’s law. However, the way that doctors perform a diagnosis has barely changed. Many hospitals rely on either under-supported open source software or build expensive in-house bioinformatics teams. SOPHiA AI is compatible with all sequencing technologies currently in use.

SOPHiA GENETICS recently entered the nascent field of liquid biopsies, with an app that interprets circulating tumour DNA and circulating tumour cells in blood, urine, cerebral spinal fluid and other liquid samples. Leveraging the analytical power of SOPHiA with this pioneering technology, doctors can make earlier diagnoses, leading to better treatment decisions. They can also monitor the efficacy of cancer treatments without having to wait months to see changes in imaging scans.

"SOPHiA GENETICS is a company at the forefront of two rapidly changing technologies: genomic medicine and artificial intelligence," said James Wise, the partner at Balderton leading the investment. "By giving every healthcare professional a standardized, straightforward and fast way to analyze these complex data sets is an essential step to unlock the potential of Data-Driven Medicine. As diagnostic kits and sequencers become cheaper and more powerful, we believe that there is an opportunity to build the defining software layer on top of these technologies in genomics, just as Windows did for PCs and Android has for smartphones, and SOPHiA GENETICS is already leading in this field."