PomegraCori Clinical, a London AI workspace that checks clinical-trial protocols against regulatory guidance, has raised a €3.56M seed round led by Breega.
Key Takeaways
- Cori Clinical closed a €3.56M (about $4M) seed round led by Breega on October 7, 2026.
- Enzo Ventures, Heartfelt, Together Ventures and Bynd also joined. Valuation is undisclosed.
- Two of the five largest contract research organisations are already customers.
Lead
Cori Clinical, a London startup founded in December 2024, announced a €3.56M seed round on October 7, 2026. Breega led the round, with Enzo Ventures, Heartfelt, Together Ventures and Bynd participating. The company has not disclosed its valuation.
Cori sells an AI workspace that links trial design to regulatory guidance from the FDA, MHRA and EMA, plus data from clinical-trial registries. The pitch is narrow: catch protocol mistakes before a study launches, when fixing them costs the least.
What Does Cori Clinical Actually Build?
Cori builds an AI workspace that merges a sponsor's own trial history with outside regulatory and registry data. Teams start from an initial trial brief and work toward a full protocol, a submission package and operational plans. Cori calls the output a "living blueprint."
The product also lets teams test a proposed design against past experience and the wider evidence base. It flags risks, compares options, and ties design decisions to budgets, timelines and operational plans. It competes mainly with the manual process it replaces: spreadsheets, shared documents and the memory of senior clinical staff.
Why Do Protocol Errors Matter So Much?
Protocol errors matter because amendments are common and expensive. A 2022 survey, published in 2024, found that 76% of protocols require at least one amendment. Median direct costs run to $141,000 for Phase II trials and $535,000 for Phase III, before counting the delay to patient enrolment.
Cori's own figures are less independent. Based on internal modelling, the company estimates it can cut average trial set-up costs by at least 33%. In an internal evaluation, its AI reviewer flagged 82% of the protocol errors classed as avoidable. Neither number has been validated by a third party, and set-up savings in a model are not savings on a sponsor's invoice.
Who Is Backing and Running the Company?
The company is run by CEO Jorn Jansen Schoonhoven, who previously worked at Amazon and IBM and invested at Octopus Ventures. CTO Patricio Fernández led data science at Sanofi and AstraZeneca, where he directed data science at AstraZeneca's Evinova unit.
Dr Emma Ogburn joins as Chief Clinical Officer from Lindus Health. Breega partner Matthieu Vallin described the gap between trial design and enrolment as a critical but overlooked bottleneck, with months lost in between. Edgar Vicente, founding partner at Enzo Ventures, said he expects Cori to become core infrastructure for trial design and operations.
What Does the Round Say About Traction?
The round points to early commercial proof but not scale. Cori says it works with two of the top five enterprise CROs globally, both unnamed. It has also supported neurosurgery and neuro-oncology trials at Erasmus MC, an academic medical centre in Rotterdam. Pricing and revenue are undisclosed.
A seed of this size, roughly 22 months after incorporation, is modest by recent AI standards. That suggests investors are paying for a specific workflow wedge rather than a broad platform thesis. The unnamed CRO customers carry much of the weight in that case, since CROs are slow buyers and may be running pilots rather than full deployments.
How Will the Money Be Used?
Cori will spend the funds on product development, delivery capacity, and growth across its clinical, engineering and commercial teams. It also plans to deepen the regulatory and clinical intelligence in the platform. Keeping that regulatory layer current across three agencies is the harder engineering problem, because guidance changes and each regulator frames requirements differently.
Outlook
Cori enters a crowded field of AI tools for clinical operations with a focused claim: better protocols mean fewer amendments. The next test is evidence. Named customers, independent validation of the 33% cost figure, and conversion of CRO relationships into paid, multi-trial contracts would show whether the product changes outcomes or only speeds up drafting. A Series A would likely hinge on those proofs.