Proscia, a leading provider of digital pathology software, announced today that they have successfully raised an additional $9 million as an extension of their Series C funding round, raising their total to $46 million. This funding comes after recently receiving FDA clearance for their software platform which will expand reach in U.S. diagnostic market.
Highline Capital Management and Triangle Peak Partners led Proscia’s Series C extension, with participation from existing investors such as Alpha Intelligence Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Hitachi Ventures and others. The funds will be used to accelerate Proscia’s commercial growth while further developing AI-powered applications for life sciences laboratories and diagnostic labs.
“We are overjoyed by Proscia’s new regulatory clearance, as it allows them to sell diagnostic products into the U.S. market at a time when this kind of help is so desperately needed,” stated David West, cofounder and CEO of Proscia in an interview with VentureBeat. This funding will enable Proscia to accelerate its mission of changing how we diagnose and treat diseases like cancer through digital pathology data and AI technologies.
Proscia’s software platform is already used by 14 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies to leverage massive amounts of pathology image data to drive drug discovery and development. Now with FDA clearance in hand, Proscia can bring digital pathology solutions directly into diagnostic labs in response to rising cancer rates as well as global pathologist shortages.
West recently told VentureBeat that pathology data was extremely infrastructure-intensive. “We’re talking orders of magnitude larger than other medical data, which explains why companies like Nvidia talk so extensively about AI in life sciences and GPU needs. We have collaborated with cloud providers like AWS and Azure so it is simple for enterprises to scale.”
Proscia’s open platform approach enables the company, its partners, and customers to develop and deploy AI applications targeted towards specific diseases or use cases. “It’s similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT app marketplace in that regards,” explained West. “That is one model which could apply here.”
Proscia’s AI applications make pathologists’ work more efficient so that they can focus on higher-level analysis instead of manual tasks like quality control and tumor identification, making Proscia an ideal partner to lead this transformation of digital pathology. Digital pathology adoption is anticipated to reach 100% within 5-7 years, so Proscia is well-placed to lead its implementation.
West argued that Silicon Valley had neglected pathology. “Pathology is an area with numerous regulations and data sources; yet its market is large enough that our presence here would make an impactful statement about pathology itself. We’re here because we believe pathology deserves great software solutions.”
Proscia’s latest funding and FDA clearance positions it to make its impact felt, ushering in an era of AI-powered pathology that improves patient outcomes. As digital pathology and AI continue to merge into one, Proscia stands out with its open platform approach and enterprise-scale solutions as a company to watch in healthcare technology landscape.
