NEW YORK–Auxilius, the company that simplifies and streamlines clinical trial financial management for biotech companies, today announced it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Renegade Partners, with participation from previous investors Bain Capital Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital, as well as a number of prominent angel investors, including Andy Palmer (Koa Labs), Chase Gilbert (Built Technologies), and Sam Whitaker (Greenphire). Roseanne Wincek from Renegade Partners is joining the board.
“We’ve all learned how critical biotechs are for the well-being of our communities. And yet, they have been largely tech-forgotten, lacking basic financial tooling to operate at scale,” said Ross Fubini, founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital. “Auxilius powers essential financial processes and workflows — enabling clinical organizations to focus on life-saving science.”
Over the past decade, two distinct trends shaped drug development. First, a notable shift in where innovation takes place – with more than 80% of registered clinical trials now sponsored by emerging biopharma companies, up from 55% in 2009. Second, clinical operations are increasingly outsourced to external vendors, including Clinical Research Organizations (CROs) and a growing set of functional and decentralized service providers. The result is an evolving – and growing – shadow industry that emerging biopharma companies are ill-equipped to manage operationally.
As biotechs progress from lab to clinic to IPO, drug development is no longer just about science. Nearly one-quarter of Phase 3 trials fail due to lack of funding – not because of the safety or efficacy of the treatment. For clinical trial sponsors managing milestone to milestone, operational rigor and spend management are essential to extend the company’s runway and help clinical teams achieve clinical outcomes.
“Auxilius empowers financial leaders at biopharma companies to make sound business decisions so they can support the important work of their colleagues in clinical development,” said Adam Weisman, co-founder and CEO of Auxilius. “We provide a powerful toolset that makes it exponentially easier for companies to oversee all of the moving parts – contract terms, change orders, clinical milestones, and financial complexities – to keep trial budgets on track.”
“This industry is awash with clinical tools and industry agnostic FP&A software, but the bulk of clinical R&D spend has historically been managed manually in spreadsheets,” said Adam Mostafa, CFO of X4 Pharma. “Auxilius was purpose-built for companies like ours to manage clinical complexity, maintain alignment across clinical and financial stakeholders through change, and scale as our organization evolves.”
Although the life sciences industry spends $54 billion on software and IT, 90% of all drug companies still use spreadsheets and manual reconciliation of data for trial accounting, financial management, risk monitoring and reporting. Clinical toolsets (CTMS, EDC) are designed to manage clinical data, not serve finance leaders. Conversely, industry-agnostic finance tools such as accounting software and generic FP&A solutions weren’t built to handle the complexity of clinical R&D. Auxilius bridges this operational divide with a SaaS platform that packages the process, rigor, and efficiency needed to successfully manage a trial into a seamless and intuitive toolset.
The Auxilius SaaS platform unifies disparate clinical, contractual, and financial data to empower companies to streamline core FP&A and accounting workflows, hold outsourced vendors accountable through change, and put processes in place that support audit, compliance, and reporting requirements. The platform was built to serve the needs and pace of growth at emerging, scaling, and mature biotech companies – providing the same financial and operational rigor that would exist at a top 10 pharma company for less than the cost of a full-time employee.
Since its launch late last year, Auxilius has been in pilot with clinical trial sponsors managing 15 pre-clinical through Phase 3 programs, 45 distinct vendors, and nearly $100 million in trial spend. The company expects the solution to be deployed at 25 clients by end-of-year.
“The benefit of the Auxilius platform is immediately apparent to the biotech companies that now drive the majority of drug research and development,” said Roseanne Wincek, co-founder and managing director at Renegade Partners. “Auxilius could be the difference between bringing a cure for disease to market and seeing it languish in a lab.”
“It’s tempting to believe that clinical R&D is inherently unpredictable, and given what’s at stake, that costs don’t matter,” added Weisman. “The reality is that costs do matter and play an essential role in determining whether a therapy is ultimately successful. As we look ahead, we are committed to reducing financial risk and infusing financial intelligence at every step in the drug development life cycle. We fundamentally believe that combining financial rigor with cutting-edge science will ultimately make more life-saving therapies available, at affordable costs.”
