Grove AI, a next-generation clinical trial management and intelligence company, announced a $4.9 million seed fundraise led by A*, with participation from Afore Capital, LifeX Ventures, Pear VC, Upfront Ventures, and industry-leading angels. The company’s additional investors include angel backers with deep sector expertise, such as Ajit Baid (former Head of Global Asset at UCB), Chloe Yoo (Director at ICON), Phuc Truong (co-founder of CRIO), Till Pieper (former Google Cloud AI lead), and others.
This funding will enable Grove to continue scaling its team and product to redefine clinical trials from siloed operations into participant-centered ecosystems driven by real-time data. Despite a significant role in advancing medicine, clinical trials face fragmented issues, slow feedback loops, and inefficient workflows. And these challenges frustrate participants, overwhelm site staff, and cost pharmaceutical companies up to millions per day in delays. And Grove tackles these barriers by streamlining participant qualification, enhancing engagement and retention, and delivering actionable insights for more innovative, faster trials.
Grove CEO and co-founder Tran Le was inspired by personal experiences enrolling in clinical trials. Le and co-founder Sohit Gatiganti have dedicated hundreds of hours to visiting sites, shadowing staff, and listening to participants to engineer a better solution.
In the past year, Grove’s industry-compliant platform has supported tens of thousands of participants across diverse therapeutic areas, achieving a 97% participant satisfaction rate. And by seamlessly integrating with existing workflows, the platform delivers actionable insights that optimize trial operations, accelerate time-to-first visit, and enhance participant diversity.
At the core is Grace, a multilingual, 24/7 AI clinical research agent. And Grace prescreens participants, schedules appointments, and coordinates logistics and follow-ups. By empowering a dynamic feedback loop, Grace enables research teams to adapt rapidly, reduce staff burnout, and conduct trials with unparalleled efficiency and precision.
KEY QUOTES:
“Clinical trials should be more than bureaucratic hurdles—they should empower participants and accelerate transformative therapies.”
– Tran Le, CEO and co-founder of Grove
“Our AI-powered participant relationship management (PRM) platform sets a new standard in clinical trials, ensuring every participant feels supported through consistent, high-quality, and personalized interactions.”
– Sohit Gatiganti
“In just two months of partnering with Grove, we transformed how our teams operate and engage with participants. We prescreened and booked hundreds of participants for our Alzheimer’s and vaccine trials, freed our staff of thousands of hours of repetitive work, and gained insights that boosted our efficiency and scale. We look forward to expanding our partnership with Grove to launch more sites and trials at scale.”
– Sean Stanton, co-founder of K2 Medical Research
“As clinical trials become increasingly complex, the industry requires solutions that not only interpret data but also deliver actionable insights and tangible results. Grove equips life science leaders with the tools to accelerate breakthroughs and drive greater efficiency.”
– Gautam Gupta, co-founder and general partner at A*
