OWKIN, the AI startup that uses machine learning to augment medical and biology research, today announced it has closed an additional Series A investment round extension with GV, raising a total of $18 million to-date.

The capital raised will be used to continue the development of its AI platform, strengthen the company's strategic partnerships, and support internal growth.

OWKIN's proprietary platform, OWKIN Socrates, is designed to help researchers in academia, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry advance medical research. OWKIN uses machine learning technology to integrate biomedical images, genomics and clinical data to discover biomarkers and mechanisms associated with diseases and treatment outcomes.

"There is a constant race happening between the data at hand and the knowledge we gain from it. At OWKIN, our goal is to augment doctors' and researchers' capabilities in transforming data into knowledge and prediction, and achieve breakthrough medical moments such as the discovery of a new biomarker or target that could transform how patients are treated," said Thomas Clozel, M.D., CEO and co-founder of OWKIN. "Having GV's investment in OWKIN further validates the need to create new tools for the future of medical research."

OWKIN partners with leading pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, Roche, and Ipsen, and develops scientific collaborations with top-tier medical institutions such as Mount Sinai, Institut Curie and Centre Léon Bérard. OWKIN has recently announced a framework agreement with Inserm, one of the largest public research institutions solely focused on human health and medical research. With a 2017 budget of over €900 million, Inserm brings together nearly 17,000 researchers, engineers, technicians, managers, university professors, and post-docs.

"OWKIN has assembled a talented team of experts in applied machine learning with clinical data experience," said Adam Ghobarah, General Partner at GV. "Utilizing EHR-derived clinical data, pathology imaging and sequencing data, OWKIN has created a differentiated approach to rich datasets that are highly valuable to research institutions and the pharmaceutical industry at-large."

About OWKIN
OWKIN is the AI startup that uses machine learning to augment medical and biology research. Its proprietary platform, OWKIN Socrates, uses machine learning technology to integrate biomedical images, genomics and clinical data to discover biomarkers and mechanisms associated with diseases and treatment outcomes.

The company develops scientific collaborations with top-tier medical institutions such as Mount Sinai, Inserm, Institut Curie and the Léon Bérard Center, and partners with leading pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, Roche, Ipsen and Actelion. OWKIN doesn't collect, store or share any patient data. OWKIN has developed a state-of-the-art federated learning technology in healthcare to overcome the data sharing problem, building collective intelligence from distributed data at scale while preserving data privacy and security. Investors include GV, Otium, Cathay Innovation and NJF Capital. More information at: www.owkin.com.