Thanks to a 2020 spent proving the usefulness of its real-world evidence platform in rapidly responding to a global health crisis, Aetion has more than doubled its total venture funding to date with the close of a $110 million series C.
Aetion’s platform compiles and analyzes real-world data from a variety of sources to assess the safety and effectiveness of medical products. It’s used not only by the medtech and biopharma creators of those technologies but also by the insurance companies that pay for them and the government agencies that regulate them.
Last May, for example, the FDA tapped Aetion to gather a broad range of data about COVID-19. The initiative was launched to improve the FDA’s understanding of the spread of the virus, complications related to the disease and the effects of various treatments, all of which helped the agency make authorization decisions about the hundreds of new devices and drugs that rapidly cropped up to help manage the pandemic.
Between that partnership and several other projects launched throughout the year to respond to COVID-19, Aetion renewed 100% of its contracts in 2020 and saw its revenues nearly double for the year.
Those major votes of confidence undoubtedly contributed to the impressive size of the company’s latest funding round. The $110 million take, led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus, brings Aetion’s lifelong funding to $212 million, following a series B that stretched across multiple extensions before finally closing with $82 million last August.
B Capital and Foresite Capital, plus existing Aetion shareholders New Enterprise Associates and Flare Capital Partners, also joined in on the financing.
Aetion said it will use the capital to grow in practically every direction: In addition to advancing the capabilities of its data analytics platform, the company will also add to its commercial team and expand its footprint in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
Beyond the FDA and most of the world’s top biopharma firms, those clients now also include the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which selected Aetion’s platform as the pricing watchdog’s primary source of real-world data analysis last year. ICER is now using Aetion’s technology to update previous assessments of therapies and technologies, including a trio of drugs to prevent hereditary angioedema attacks.