South San Francisco, California - Aug 19, 2025 (UTC) - Convoke, an AI-native operating system designed specifically for the biopharmaceutical industry, announced today that it has raised $8.6 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its platform that aims to streamline drug development and commercialization processes.
The funding round was led by prominent venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Dimension Capital, with additional participation from ACME, Comma Capital, Liquid2, Not Boring Capital, Audacious, Lux Capital, and several angel investors. The substantial investor backing reflects growing confidence in AI’s potential to transform the traditionally lengthy and complex biopharma development process.
CEO and co-founder Alex Telford highlighted the inefficiencies currently plaguing the industry, noting that “a surprising amount of time is lost to manual, repetitive, or burdensome tasks that could be automated with language model-based systems.” The Convoke platform addresses these challenges by functioning as an “information factory” for biopharma teams, ingesting raw data and automating critical analysis and decision-making processes.
The company’s solution unifies internal knowledge, workflows, and external data into a continuously updating workspace that enables biopharma teams to automate analysis, codify decision logic, and accelerate outputs across the entire drug development lifecycle. This comprehensive approach aims to help teams move from initial concept to market significantly faster than traditional methods allow.
Founded by Alex Telford, Maged Ahmed, and Vikas Velagapudi, Convoke represents a new generation of AI-powered tools specifically designed to tackle the unique challenges facing pharmaceutical companies. The platform generates critical deliverables across drug development and commercialization, potentially reducing the time and cost associated with bringing new medications to market.
The funding will support continued platform development and expansion efforts, as the company works to establish itself as a key infrastructure provider for the modern biopharma industry. With drug development typically taking over a decade and costing billions of dollars, solutions that can meaningfully compress timelines while maintaining quality standards represent significant value for the industry.
About Convoke
Convoke is the AI-native operating system for biopharma companies, offering software tools that unify internal and external data, codify decision logic, and generate critical deliverables across the drug lifecycle, helping teams move from idea to market faster. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, California.
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