Clinical trials are where ambition goes to sweat. Roughly 70% of pharma R and D budgets live there, and about 90% of drug candidates never make it out alive. That is not a rounding error; that is a structural problem hiding in plain sight. Valinor Discovery stepped into that mess with a simple belief: if the industry insists on betting big, it should at least stop betting blind.
Founded in Sept 2024 and emerging from stealth in May 2025, Valinor Discovery moves like a company that understands time is the most expensive reagent in biotech. December added the punctuation mark. A $13M seed round announced Dec 10–11, co-led by CRV, Harpoon Ventures, Amino Collective, and Pelion Venture Partners, with serious operators leaning in because the thesis actually holds water.
Joshua Pacini and Zhanel Nugmanova did not start a drug company, and that distinction matters. Valinor Discovery builds the machinery that helps drug developers know which patients are likely to respond before millions disappear into Phase II purgatory. Predictive models instead of prayers. Multimodal ML trained on matched longitudinal multi-omics tied to real clinical outcomes, not synthetic optimism.
Oncology is the opening act because that is where failure is loudest and most expensive. Rare diseases and neurodegeneration are already in motion. Collaborations with Stanford Medicine’s Montgomery Lab, Helmholtz Munich’s Theis Lab, and contributions to Open Problems are not decorative logos. They signal a platform that expects to be challenged, benchmarked, and proven in public.
The technical spine is elegant and unforgiving. Virtual patients grounded in transcriptomics, proteomics, methylation, and clinical assays from the same humans over time. Patient level prediction instead of isolated cell theatrics. Stratification that actually stratifies. Generative models asking better biological questions instead of guessing loudly.
This round follows an earlier $5M seed in May, also led by CRV and Harpoon Ventures. Total capital now sits at $18M, but the real asset is the dataset moat being assembled. Longitudinal, proprietary, and brutally hard to replicate. That is how defensibility is built when software meets biology.
The bench reflects intent. Joshua Pacini brings operational velocity. Zhanel Nugmanova brings computational biology rigor shaped at Dartmouth. Chase Neumann brings Recursion forged oncology judgment. Matthew Mella brings mathematical precision and ML fluency. No passengers, no cosplay.
Geography tells its own story. Utah roots, SF expansion, ties intact. Talent where it compounds, execution where it focuses, partnerships where they matter. Pharma does not need louder promises. It needs fewer late stage funerals. Valinor Discovery is betting that better patient selection changes the math, the timelines, and eventually the culture of how drugs get built.
Startups Startup Funding Venture Capital Seed Round Biotech Pharmaceutical Healthcare Health Tech Technology Innovation Tech Ecosystem Startup Ecosystem
