Barcelona-based Biorce, a healthtech startup revolutionising clinical trials with AI, has secured €5M from Norrsken VC, Europe’s largest impact VC.
Norrsken VC is Europe’s early-stage fund investing in impact. Headquartered in Stockholm, the VC backs startups solving the world’s biggest problems while building massive businesses.
Tove Larsson, General Partner at Norrsken VC says, “Biorce is exactly the kind of pioneering company we’re here to back. They’re combining deep sector expertise with cutting-edge AI to solve what truly matters. Their platform has the potential to radically reduce both the time and cost of bringing new treatments to market, unlocking huge value for pharma and, more importantly, faster access to life-saving therapies for patients.”
A few days back, Norrsken VC, together with Norrsken Launcher and Norrsken Accelerator, announced a €300M commitment to back European startups using AI to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.
The funding comes just seven months after the Spanish company raised €3.5M in its first round in November 2024, led by healthtech specialist YZR Capital and Mustard Seed Maze.
Fund utilisation
Biorce will use the funds to boost US expansion, scale its engineering and sales teams, drive product development, and drive revenue growth towards eight-digit figures.
Speaking to Silicon Canals about the company’s expansion plans, Pedro Coelho, Founder and CEO of Biorce, says, “We have recently established a presence in the United States and are focusing most of our hiring efforts there while continuing to grow our Barcelona office.”
Currently, the company employs around 30 people and is hiring AI engineers, software developers, experienced sales professionals, and scientists with deep expertise in clinical trials.
What does Biorce solve?
Clinical trials are vital for creating new treatments, but they often face chronic delays.
About 70 per cent of trials start late, and nearly 60 per cent have expensive changes that can cost between $250K and $450K.
These issues slow down patient access to important treatments. Many problems are caused by poorly designed plans, miscommunication at trial sites, and logistical errors.
By using effective AI solutions, a large pharmaceutical company could save millions of dollars each year.
Founded by a team with deep roots in life sciences, Biorce directly addresses these operational inefficiencies holding back clinical progress.
Biorce Origin: From personal loss to a bigger mission
According to Coelho, the idea for Biorce took shape mid-air, quite literally.
“Biorce was born from an idea during a flight from Lisbon to San Francisco for the JPM Health Conference in January 2024. The inspiration came after I lost my father to melanoma. Thanks to a clinical trial I was able to enrol him in, we managed to extend his life by 10 months beyond the initial prognosis. That personal experience planted the seed for Biorce: to bring better, faster clinical research to more patients.”
The company’s technology simplifies the process from start to finish – everything from patient recruitment to designing trial protocols and choosing the right trial sites.
The aim is to cut down on delays, boost success rates, and speed up access to critical treatments.
The early roadblocks
As with any startup, the beginning wasn’t smooth sailing.
Coelho and his team faced the usual hurdles — hiring the right people, raising the first round of investment, and most importantly, understanding the pain points of the clinical research world.
“In other words, the same foundational problems most startups/early-stage companies face when they start,” he adds.
Transforming clinical trials through AI
Biorce is a health tech company transforming how clinical trials are designed and executed through advanced AI.
In terms of business model, Biorce operates on a B2B enterprise licensing model, which means clients can access the full platform under a single contract.
This structure gives internal teams the freedom to collaborate across departments, from clinical operations to regulatory affairs, without worrying about scaling costs.
Coelho shares that while the company’s main customers are biotech and pharmaceutical firms, Biorce also works closely with CROs (Contract Research Organisations) and medical device companies, providing each with tailored access to tools that simplify protocol creation and streamline trial planning.
According to Coelho, Biorce is well on its way to hitting eight-digit revenue by the end of the year.
Less time lost, few costly mistakes
The company’s AI platform, Jarvis, streamlines protocol development, site selection, and feasibility assessment, reducing complexity, accelerating timelines, and improving operational efficiency.
That means less time lost, fewer costly mistakes, and a faster, more efficient path to bringing new therapies to market.
Powered by a proprietary database of over 530,000 annotated clinical studies, Biorce enables pharmaceutical and biotech companies and CROs to make faster, data-driven decisions without compromising quality or patient safety.
Fully therapeutic area–agnostic
Designed to be a fully therapeutic area–agnostic, the platform is currently powering programs across oncology, neurology, and beyond, accelerating time-to-market by enabling smarter, faster decisions.
For example, in oncology, it helped rapidly iterate a Phase II solid tumour protocol, refining inclusion criteria in line with evolving regulatory guidance.
In neurology, it supported protocol development and site strategy for a multicenter Alzheimer’s trial by integrating prior trial data and real-world benchmarks at the earliest stages.
Sharing the responses from users, Coelho reveals, “The response has been overwhelmingly positive. On average, users save 236 hours for every hour spent on our platform. A clear signal of the value Biorce brings to their workflows. At this point, our platform has generated over 300 clinical trial protocols (100 of those in just the past month). This means we could soon see over 100 clinical trials launched with protocols created using Biorce’s platform.”
Having been part of Norrsken Barcelona from its early beginnings, Biorce has experienced significant client interest and doubled its team size since its first round in November 2024.
The company is currently operating in Spain, the UK and the Nordics.
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