Tempus raises $110 million at $2 billion valuation

Eric
Lefkofsky, chief executive officer of biotechnology company
Tempus, arrives for a morning session of the annual Allen &
Company Sun Valley Conference, July 11, 2018 in Sun Valley,
Idaho.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Images

• Tempus, a technology company started by Groupon founder
  Eric Lefkofsky, just raised $110 million at a $2 billion
  valuation. 
• The three-year-old Chicago-based company pulls together
  data on cancer patients on its platform, including genetic data
  from tumors and clinical data about how a patient is responding
  to treatment. 
• The company plans to use the funding to expand its
  platform into other therapeutic areas. 

A startup that aims to make treating diseases more personalized
just raised another $110 million. 

Tempus, which was started by Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky, aims
to use data to find better cancer treatments for patients, using
both clinical data — information about which medications patients
have taken and how they responded to them — and genetic data from
the tumors of cancer patients.

The company announced on Wednesday that it has raised $110
million at a $2 billion valuation, bringing its total funding to
$320 million. In 2018 alone, the company has raised $190
million. 

The funding came from investors including Baillie Gifford,
T. Rowe Price, Revolution Growth, New Enterprise Associates, and
previous investors in the company. 

Chicago-based Tempus got its start in 2015, and in the last three
years has rocketed into unicorn territory. The startup runs
a lab that’s able to sequence tumor genetics to see what
mutations could be impacting an individual’s cancer. At the same
time, Tempus sorts through clinical data from doctors,
hospitals, and studies to standardize the information and analyze
for patterns. 

It’s similar to the work of two other prominent companies
that were
both recently acquired by pharma giant Roche: Flatiron
Health, which focuses on collecting clinical data about cancer,
and Foundation Medicine, which is centered around cancer
genetics.

Tempus said in a
press release that the new funding would be used to expand
its technology into new treatment areas beyond cancer, as well as
to grow geographically. Tempus said its platform currently
reaches one of every four cancer patients in the US.