EQT has acquired a majority position to support the growth of CluePoints, a leading provider of AI-powered software solutions used for data interrogation and analytics in clinical trials.

CluePoints, which was founded in Belgium in 2012, is a cloud-based software platform for Risk-Based Quality Management (“RBQM”) and data quality oversight in clinical trials, designed to enable safer and more efficient processes and improve data integrity and risk compliance.

Having spent more than 10 years performing clinical trials and developing advanced statistics and machine learning, CluePoints says that their algorithms help drive positive outcomes for pharmaceutical and biotech companies, contract research organizations, and other customers.

The Company offers an end-to-end value proposition from initial risk identification to ongoing tracking and monitoring of issues and discrepancies throughout the drug development process. By analyzing data, CluePoints can detect patterns and derive insights that help optimize clinical trial processes. This leads to more reliable results and improved patient outcomes.

With more than 9,500 platform users, CluePoints has helped de-risk more than 1,600 studies and has detected over 142,000 issues for its customers, which include many of the top 20 largest pharmaceutical companies.

Following a growth investment from Summit Partners in 2020, the company has generated significant growth, building a robust go-to-market function, launching new products and diversifying into new markets.

EQT’s investment comes at a time when CluePoints is seeing accelerating growth, as well as increasing adoption of RBQM software across virtually all clinical trial phases.

The wider industry is also experiencing momentum due to growing research and development (R&D) spend, increasing data complexity in clinical trials, and a focus on patient safety and data quality driven partly by regulatory scrutiny.

The investment is being made through the EQT Healthcare Growth and the EQT Technology Growth strategies.

Andy Cooper, CEO of CluePoints, said: “We are delighted that EQT has chosen to partner with CluePoints. EQT is a market-leading investor in both SaaS (Software as a Service) and medical research industries. This combination makes EQT an ideal partner for CluePoints which is a market leader for SaaS-based clinical data analytics.

Dr Mark Braganza, Partner in the EQT Healthcare Growth Advisory Team, commented: “We are excited to be partnering with CluePoints and its dynamic leadership team to help it scale and reach its full potential. The Company’s ambition is a perfect match with ours to help enable the development of medical research to deliver more effective, efficient and accessible healthcare.”

While Kirk Lepke, Partner in the EQT Growth Advisory Team, added: “CluePoints is a prime example of how data, machine learning, and AI can be leveraged to improve real-world outcomes – in this case, pharmaceutical drug development. The entire EQT platform is behind this investment and ready to support the Company with its continued expansion in RBQM and into growing, adjacent markets.”