Can AI predict which cancer drugs will actually work? Orakl Oncology raises €30 million to find out

Orakl Oncology, a French TechBio company using AI and real patient biology to predict how cancer drugs will perform in clinical trials, today announced a €30 million ($34 million) Series A.

The round was co-led by Norrsken VC and Singular. It included new investors InfraVia Capital Partners, Serena, the Patient Autonome Fund managed by Bpifrance, Teampact Ventures and Plug and Play, alongside existing investors Verve Ventures VC, Speedinvest and HCVC. Notable angels include Dorothy Chou, Thomas Wolf, Stanislas Polu, Jacques Boitreaud and Mostafa ElSayed, bringing Orakl’s total funding to €45 million ($50 million).

EU-Startups previously covered Orakl’s €11 million Seed round, led by Singular, in December 2024.

Dr. Fanny Jaulin, CEO and co-founder of Orakl Oncology, says: “For decades, we’ve developed cancer drugs without being able to reliably predict how they will behave in patients until they reach clinical trials. We believe the next breakthrough will come from making tumor and patient biology predictable. This funding will allow us to expand Orakl’s proven capabilities across more cancer types and pharmaceutical programmes to impact oncology more widely.”

Orakl’s funding comes alongside several 2026 European investments in AI-enabled drug development and oncology.

In France, Paris-based Rivercell raised €22 million for AI-powered cell-response modelling, Generare secured €20 million for molecular drug discovery, and Lyon-based ErVimmune announced a €17 million first closing for cancer immunotherapies.

Elsewhere, Barcelona-based Biorce raised €43.8 million for AI-driven clinical trials, Switzerland’s Adaptyv Bio secured €34.35 million for automated biological testing, Belgium’s Sightera Biosciences raised €3 million for patient-derived AI drug discovery, and London’s Big Picture Bio secured €2.55 million in funding and grants for AI-designed cancer drug combinations.

Alongside London’s Helical (€8.4 million), these announcements represent approximately €151.1 million in financing, rising to €181.1 million when Orakl’s Series A is included.

Jeremy Uzan, co-founder and General Partner at Singular, adds: “Fanny, Gustave and Diane-Laure bring together a rare combination of expertise in cancer research, cell biology and computational biology, alongside a clear understanding of what the pharmaceutical industry needs. They’ve translated that expertise into a platform that combines real patient biology, experimental data and AI to predict how cancer drugs will perform in clinical trials. We’re proud to continue backing the team as they scale.”

Founded in 2023, Orakl Oncology is building AI-powered ‘virtual cancer patients’ to predict how new oncology drugs will perform before they ever enter clinical trials. Spun out of the Gustave Roussy Institute, the company combines lab-grown, patient-derived tumor organoids with deep clinical and molecular data.

AI can now predict protein structures and design new molecules. Yet the company explains that one of drug development’s biggest challenges remains unresolved: predicting whether a promising treatment will actually work in patients. AI-designed cancer drugs still stumble in Phase 2, where around 75% of oncology candidates fail, largely because the complexity of patient and tumor biology remains poorly understood.

Orakl bridges biological and AI by building cohorts of virtual cancer patients: real patients’ tumors, grown in the lab and paired with their medical history and deep biological data. Because these virtual patients can be tested against treatments at scale, Orakl can reportedly predict, with causal evidence, how a patient will respond to a drug many years before it reaches the clinic.

Pharma companies can then bet on the right drugs, for the right patients, much earlier.

According to Orakl, their predictive engine has demonstrated 90% accuracy in predicting cancer clinical trial outcomes, including predictions that closely anticipated recent pancreatic cancer trial results. Beyond predicting clinical endpoints, the platform can identify which patients are most likely to respond to a treatment and uncover biological mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance.

Candidate targets are then validated on Orakl’s proprietary patient-derived models through a lab-in-the-loop approach.

More than 15 additional cancer centres across Europe, North America and Asia are in contract negotiations, as Orakl aims to build the most comprehensive dataset in oncology.

Agate Freimane, General Partner at Norrsken VC, says: “Too many drugs still enter expensive clinical trials without a clear view of which patients they will work for. Orakl is tackling this bottleneck with a platform combining proprietary biological data, hospital partnerships, lab infrastructure and AI that is exceptionally hard to replicate. We believe Orakl has the potential to become a defining platform for oncology R&D.”

Orakl also welcomes advisor Philip Tagari, insitro CSO, who over 24 years at Amgen led 600+ discovery scientists globally and helped bring the first approved KRAS inhibitor (Lumakras) and DLL3 BiTE (Imdelltra) to lung and other cancer patients.

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