ArcaScience Raises $7M to Transform Drug Development with AI-Driven Insights

AI healthtech startup ArcaScience has raised $7 million in seed funding to accelerate its mission of transforming pharmaceutical benefit-risk assessments through artificial intelligence. The round was led by The Moon Venture, with participation from Pléiade Venture, Plug&Play Ventures, Bpifrance, and AKKA Technologies, marking the company's first institutional funding round following a €1.3 million pre-seed raise.

Founded by Romain Clement after witnessing firsthand the inefficiencies in medicine's approach to tailored treatments and drug evaluation, ArcaScience addresses critical blind spots in how new pharmaceuticals are assessed. The company's AI technology radically improves benefit-risk evaluations, providing regulators, clinical teams, and patients with tools to make safer, more informed decisions about drug candidates.

The pharmaceutical industry faces staggering challenges in drug development, with timelines exceeding 10 years, a 90 percent failure rate, and average costs of $2.3 billion per approved drug. "It takes 10+ years to bring a drug to market. There is a 90 per cent fail rate and the average cost per drug that makes it to the market is $2.3 billion. Benefit-risk prediction is no longer a nice-to-have, but a prerequisite for building better drugs. This funding round will help us scale our product, and bring real benefit-risk clarity to both the pharma industry and patients. We're thrilled to be backed by The Moon Venture whose team of founders turned investors bring unparalleled access to global entrepreneurs and healthtech networks, and Pléiade Venture, who are known for helping startups scale to profitability and long-term success," explained Romain Clement, Founder and CEO at ArcaScience.

The global benefit-risk evaluation market represents a $13 billion annual opportunity, with experts predicting that 80 percent of pharmaceutical companies will rely on AI solutions for benefit-risk evaluation by 2026. ArcaScience has already established significant market traction, working with 10 pharmaceutical clients including Sanofi, AstraZeneca, GSK, Takeda, and ICON, as well as the Paris Brain Institute. The company also participates in a pan-European consortium alongside Sanofi, Imagine for Margo, the Paris Brain Institute, Institut Gustave Roussy, Medical University of Vienna, and pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca, Roche, and Merck, focusing on combating pediatric brain cancer with AI.

"ArcaScience is solving a critical need in the pharmaceutical industry with a groundbreaking technological approach," said the team at The Moon Venture. "We've seen remarkable market traction to date, and we believe they are ideally positioned to have a major impact in the pharma and patient care industries. This investment aligns with our strategy of supporting companies that are transforming entire industries through AI."

The platform has already demonstrated real-world impact, being used by over 70,000 patients in chronic skin diseases while clinical operations and pharmacovigilance leaders adopt it to derisk clinical trials. The new funding will support US and UK expansion, launch patient-facing solutions for pediatric brain cancer and dermatological diseases, and grow the team to accelerate translating AI capabilities into measurable clinical impact.

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