Owkin is France’s latest unicorn after raising $180 million in equity investment from Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical company.
The startup uses machine learning and predictive AI to generate biomarkers for both disease and treatment outcomes. This data allows clinical trials to be more effective.
Instead of gathering data on the company’s servers, Owkin uses Federated Learning so only the predictive models from other sources travel between servers. Thus, Owkin ensures to transmit learning while maintaining privacy.
Owkin aims to connect the global healthcare industry through the responsible use of data and artificial intelligence. Both companies hope that the partnership allows for presence in the world’s top oncology centers.
“This landmark partnership with Sanofi will see federated learning used to create research collaborations at a truly unprecedented scale”, Thomas Clozel, Owkin’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
The French-American company recently won the Best MedTech company in Oncology in the latest MedTech Visionaries Awards.