Startups, BioPharma

Groupon cofounder’s healthcare startup Tempus closes $70 million Series C round

The biotechnology company is led by Groupon cofounder and chairman Eric Lefkofsky. The latest round brings the startup's total funding to $130 million.

Chicago-based Tempus has closed a $70 million Series C round co-led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Revolution Growth.

The biotechnology company is building a database of clinical and molecular information and making it accessible and useful to researchers, physicians and the patients they treat.

Tempus will use the funds to grow its database and achieve greater scale, a company spokesperson said.

The money brings the startup’s total funding to $130 million.

Two-year-old Tempus was cofounded by Groupon cofounder and chairman Eric Lefkofsky. Though he never expected to dive into healthcare, things changed when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer about three years ago.

“I was just amazed at how little technology had permeated her care and I became infatuated with trying to understand why,” he said in an interview earlier this year.

He proceeded to visit top NCI cancer centers to better understand the problems, and thus, Tempus was born. Lefkofsky currently serves as CEO.

The company has spent time creating data pipelines to collect and analyze large amounts of data. Said pipelines power software applications that assist with clinical decision support and academic research. The startup also has its own CLIA-certified lab, which has a current capacity of more than 50,000 patients annually.

It has collaborations with community hospitals as well as systems like Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic and University of Chicago Medicine.

“It’s just been an amazing couple of years,” Lefkofsky said. “We had hoped maybe one or two top medical centers would want to work with us and we’ve just been overwhelmed with how many top NCI cancer centers are adopting our technology.”

In a statement, NEA Managing General Partner Peter Barris commented on the investment in Tempus.

“Given NEA’s long and successful history investing in the intersection of technology and life science, we felt like the perfect strategic partner given Tempus’ mission to help doctors personalize care by collecting and analyzing large volumes of data,” he said.

NEA has also invested in Groupon. Barris himself sits on the board of Groupon, as does Ted Leonsis, a founder and partner of Revolution Growth.

Photo: TAW4, Getty Images

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