London-Based Bitfount Secures $8 Million In Series A Round

Bitfount solves a key problem in medical research—data sharing. While combining data across institutions can unlock major insights, privacy rules and competition often block access.

Bitfount’s federated AI technology flips the model by sending algorithms to the data instead of moving patient information. This allows secure, compliant analysis across institutions—speeding up drug development and access to treatments.

Bitfount enables healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies to collaborate on clinical research without sharing raw patient data. Unlike other platforms limited to text analysis, it supports both electronic health records (EHR) and medical imaging.

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This helps speed up clinical trials by improving patient recruitment, reducing screen failures, and enabling data-driven site selection—all while keeping data secure and under full control. It also accelerates the development of AI models.

Dr. Blaise Thomson, CEO and co-founder of Bitfount—and former Chief Architect for Siri Understanding at Apple and head of Apple’s Cambridge office—shared: 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 by Dr. Naaman Tammuz, Bitfount offers a no-code desktop app that can be used in any healthcare setting—from large hospitals to small clinics. It builds a secure, distributed network that keeps data local while enabling global collaboration. The platform focuses on solving privacy challenges that have slowed AI adoption in healthcare and life sciences.

Early pilot studies show strong results. In a Dry AMD trial with Moorfields Eye Hospital, screen failure rates dropped from 60% to 14% by combining EHR data with AI analysis of OCT images—while still identifying over 600 eligible patients at a single site.

Pharma companies and research groups can now find the right patients and trial sites without ever accessing raw patient data.

Professor Pearse Keane, Consultant Ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital and Professor of Artificial Medical Intelligence at University College London said:

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.

This funding comes at a key moment, aligning with the UK government’s 10-Year Health Plan announced in June 2025, which aims to cut clinical trial setup times from 250 to under 150 days by March 2026—making the UK a leading hub for clinical research.

Achieving this requires strong digital infrastructure. Bitfount’s federated AI platform helps by allowing secure collaboration without sharing sensitive data, solving a major bottleneck in UK research.

With this new funding, Bitfount will accelerate product development, grow partnerships with pharma companies and clinical research organizations (CROs), and expand its platform to cover the full clinical research process—from study design to regulatory approval.

About Bitfount

Founded in 2020, Bitfount is a privacy-preserving federated platform for AI and data collaboration. It enables users to securely discover, evaluate, and work with third-party datasets, build data consortia, and train advanced AI models—without moving sensitive data—making it ideal for industries like healthcare and life sciences.