London-based Bitfount, the federated AI platform transforming clinical research collaboration, has secured $8 million in Series A funding to scale its privacy-preserving network across healthcare systems globally.
Bitfount removes the data-sharing roadblock that has long held back clinical research. The most valuable insights often come from combining datasets across institutions. However, privacy laws and competitive concerns prevent this, leaving researchers with incomplete data, slowing drug development, and delaying access to treatments. Bitfount’s federated AI platform solves this by sending algorithms to where the data is stored, allowing secure analysis without moving sensitive patient information.
Healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies can collaborate to improve clinical research without sharing raw patient data. The platform supports both electronic health records (EHR) and medical imaging data, a unique feature compared to solutions limited to text-based analysis. It speeds up clinical trials by improving patient recruitment, lowering screen failure rates, and enabling data-driven site feasibility assessments, all while keeping data fully secure and sovereign. AI model development is similarly accelerated.
Dr Blaise Thomson, CEO and co-founder of Bitfount, previously Chief Architect for Siri Understanding at Apple and former head of Apple's Cambridge office, said:
Clinical research is broken by data silos. We've built the missing infrastructure that lets organisations collaborate securely without the impossible choice between innovation and privacy. This investment moves us further towards our vision of unlocking the value of sensitive data for the benefit of humankind, and is a testament to the great work being done by the Bitfount team and to the support of our ecosystem partners.
Co-founded with Dr Naaman Tammuz, the platform's no-code desktop application can be deployed across any healthcare setting, from major hospital systems to small community clinics, creating a distributed network that preserves local data control while enabling global collaboration. This approach focuses on the healthcare and life sciences AI market, addressing long-standing data privacy challenges that have historically slowed AI adoption.
Early pilot projects have shown a significant impact across various therapeutic areas. In one validation study with Moorfields Eye Hospital for a Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration (Dry AMD) trial, screen failure rates dropped from 60 per cent using only EHR-based searches to just 14 per cent when combining EHR data with AI-based OCT image analysis, while still identifying over 600 eligible patients at a single site.
The platform allows pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organisations to pinpoint suitable patients and ideal trial sites without ever accessing raw patient records.
Professor Pearse Keane, Consultant Ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital and Professor of Artificial Medical Intelligence at University College London, commented:
Data sharing for medical research is often hampered by privacy concerns, fragmented systems, and regulatory barriers. I have experienced this first-hand multiple times during high-profile collaborations with both industry partners and academic institutions. Federated data science and AI offer a transformative solution by enabling insights to be discovered and shared across institutions without the need for sharing any raw data.
This not only protects patient confidentiality but, by improving the speed, diversity and efficiency of clinical trials, can dramatically accelerate medical discoveries which benefit millions of patients.
The round included participation from Parkwalk Advisors, Ahren Innovation Capital, Pace Ventures, Foresight Group, and Portfolio Ventures.
Neil Cameron, Investment Director at Parkwalk, shared:
We are excited to back Blaise Thomson, who previously successfully sold a Parkwalk portfolio company to Apple, and the rest of the formidable Bitfount team. Bitfount was conceived during Blaise’s time at Apple as a technology that could overcome many of the internal and external collaboration challenges faced by organisations with confidential data and security concerns. Bitfount's initial focus on clinical trials is an area ideally suited to this type of AI application.
The funding coincides with the UK government’s ambitious 10-Year Health Plan, announced in June 2025, which introduces unprecedented support for clinical research. The plan targets a reduction in commercial trial set-up times from 250 days to 150 days or less by March 2026, positioning the UK as a global hub for clinical trials.
Reaching these goals requires overcoming critical infrastructure barriers, challenges that Bitfount’s federated AI platform is designed to solve by enabling secure collaboration without data-sharing roadblocks that have historically slowed clinical research in the UK.
The new funding will accelerate product development and expand partnerships with commercial and academic AI model developers, with a particular focus on pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organisations (CROs). Bitfount also plans to extend its platform to support the entire clinical research lifecycle, from protocol design to regulatory approval.
Lead image: Bitfount co-founders | Photo: Uncredited
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