Every year, pharmaceutical companies pour over $50 billion into clinical trials, yet the odds of success remain shockingly low—nearly 90% of drug candidates never make it past regulatory approval. A Polish startup called Ingenix believes its AI-powered clinical trial simulations can flip those odds, helping researchers shorten development timelines, reduce failure rates, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
Today, Ingenix announced a €9 million seed funding round to scale its generative AI platform. The round was led by Inovo.vc, with participation from OTB Ventures and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank. The fresh capital will help the company accelerate product development and expand its team of AI researchers and pharmaceutical experts.
Ingenix was founded by Piotr Surma and Adam Dancewicz, the same duo behind Applica—an AI company known for building proprietary multimodal large language models, which was acquired by Snowflake in 2022. Now, they’re applying their deep expertise in AI to one of healthcare’s most expensive and unpredictable problems: drug development.
CEO Piotr Surma says the challenge is enormous but solvable. According to him, human biology is incredibly complex, which makes simulating how drugs behave in real patients extremely difficult. Yet with the right data, the right models, and the right team, it’s now possible to build a system that can make clinical trials far more predictable. That’s exactly what Ingenix is doing. Their platform doesn’t just use generative AI—it combines multiple data types and biological scales, from molecules to organs to entire populations.
Instead of relying on traditional static models or outdated trial projections, Ingenix simulates the entire process. The technology acts as a virtual co-pilot for clinical development teams, generating forecasts of trial outcomes, predicting adverse effects, and suggesting modifications before a drug enters expensive real-world testing. It can model how a drug will affect individuals and broader patient populations, and it flags early signals that might otherwise only show up after months of human trials.
What makes this approach different is its multiscale, multimodal nature. Ingenix’s models operate at the molecular, cellular, tissue, and organism levels—eventually scaling up to population-level predictions. This allows the system to account for complex interactions in the human body and anticipate trial results with far more accuracy.
The startup’s potential caught the attention of Inovo.vc, which backs Central and Eastern European founders building global companies. Krzysztof Przybylak, a principal at the firm, said that in a problem space this technical and ambitious, backing the right team is critical. After working closely with the founders for nearly a year, the fund decided Ingenix was the one to lead.
OTB Ventures, a pan-European deep tech investor, sees Ingenix as a company with the power to reshape the entire pharmaceutical industry. Partner Wojtek Walniczek said the firm’s AI-driven clinical trial simulations offer a way to dramatically increase accuracy and reduce waste in drug development. The founders’ successful exit with Applica only strengthens investor confidence that they can deliver again.
IFC also joined the round, noting the potential for AI in emerging markets. Ary Naïm, the World Bank Group’s Country Manager for Poland, explained that the investment aligns with IFC’s digital health strategy. By improving access and lowering costs, technologies like Ingenix could eventually benefit patients in underserved regions. IFC sees this not just as a business opportunity, but as a way to create global impact.
Though still in the early stages, Ingenix is already positioned as one of the most advanced startups in the digital health space. With pharmaceutical R&D increasingly under pressure to improve efficiency, the demand for clinical trial solutions is soaring. AI platforms that can reduce timelines and increase the probability of success offer real value—not just to drug makers, but to regulators, physicians, and patients.
Surma believes that the pharmaceutical industry is on the verge of a transformation similar to what AI has already brought to software, design, and language. Many experts have called it pharma’s “GPT moment”—a shift from guesswork to generative precision. Ingenix, he says, is building the foundation for that future.
Backed by strong funding, a proven team, and a growing need for better tools, the company now has the momentum to push clinical trial design into a new era. For an industry where even a small improvement in trial success rates can save billions—and lives—that’s not just innovation. It’s a necessity.
