- Chicago-based Tempus announced it recently raised $200 million in a Series F round of funding at a valuation of $3.1 billion
- This is the story behind Tempus and how they are improving cancer patient care along with depression and diabetes
Chicago-based Tempus is an advanced precision medicine company that specializes in the collection and analysis of molecular and clinical data. Recently, Tempus raised $200 million in Series F funding round at a valuation of $3.1 billion.
Including this funding round, Tempus raised $520 million since it launched in September 2015. Less than a year ago, Tempus raised $110 million at a $2 billion valuation.
Baillie Gifford, Franklin Templeton, NEA, Novo Holdings, Revolution Growth, and funds and accounts managed by T. Rowe Price participated in this funding round. In conjunction with this funding round, Robert Ghenchev of Novo Holdings joined Tempus’s Board of Directors.
Tempus has seen rapid growth and this funding round will be used for further enhancing operations and accelerating its expansion into new therapeutic areas and geographies.
Currently, Tempus has the largest connected clinical and genomic database that is aggregated from academic medical centers and community-based hospitals. And the Tempus platform serves the healthcare ecosystem of providers, payers, researchers, and life sciences companies.
Tempus utilizes advanced machine learning, next-generation sequencing, and AI-assisted image recognition for its platform. With this technology, Tempus accelerates the discovery of new insights and enables physicians to make real-time and data-driven decisions on behalf of their patients.
“From our founding, Tempus has been singularly focused on improving the lives of patients diagnosed with disease, starting with cancer,” said Tempus founder and CEO Eric Lefkofsky. “Three and a half years later, we are empowering stakeholders across healthcare with insights derived from real-world clinical evidence connected to rich molecular data. We are humbled by the industry response thus far and remain committed to delivering on the promise of precision medicine to improve patient care.”
Lefkofsky is known as one of the founders of multiple tech companies including Groupon, Lightbank (VC firm), Mediabank, Echo Global Logistics, and InnerWorkings. And the Lefkofsky Family Foundation is headed by Eric Lefkofsky and Liz Lefkofsky as a married couple — which seeks to advance high-impact programs and research that enhances the quality of human life in education, human rights, medical research, and arts. Lefkofsky also participated in this funding round and has put in $100 million of his own money into the company so far, according to Forbes.
Eric founded Tempus after Liz was diagnosed with breast cancer. Last year, Eric told Forbes that he found himself spending a lot of time in the clinic and was perplexed at how little data was there for her care.
Lefkofsky still serves as chairman of Group. But he spends most of his time working on Tempus. Lefkofsky’s net worth is estimated by Forbes at $2.4 billion.
Tempus has partnerships in place with leading academic medical centers, hospital networks, NCI designated cancer centers, physicians, researchers, and CancerLinQ LLC (a nonprofit subsidiary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology).
Through these partnerships, the Tempus platform now touches over 1 in 4 cancer patients in the US. And Tempus says that its goal for each patient is to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing the healthcare industry with tools that learn as more data is gathered.
Going forward, Tempus is planning to apply its big data platform for depression and diabetes.
