Ryght AI Raises $3M to Automate Clinical Trial Site Activation with Agentic AI

Laguna Beach–based Ryght AI, co-founded by Simon Arkell and Alex Dickinson in mid-2023, develops agentic and generative AI tools to accelerate clinical trial operations. The company claims to have built digital twins for all 100,000 clinical trial sites globally. These are virtual representations designed to model site capacity, performance, and suitability for specific trial protocols.

Ryght has raised a $3 million seed round led by Foothill Ventures, with participation from LDV Partners. This follows previous funding bringing its total capital raised to over $9 million from backers including Virtue Ventures, IASO Ventures, Top Harvest Capital, and Page One Ventures.

Ryght also announced clinical trial partnerships with academic medical centers and hospitals, including Emory University, West Virginia University, The West Clinic, Keck Medicine of USC, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. It has also partnered with CROs such as QPS.

The company’s core platform supports sponsors by automating key steps like site feasibility assessment, site selection, and patient enrollment workflows. Rytht AI aims to address a major cause of trial failure: poor site feasibility, which it estimates affects over half of all trials.

Applications:

• Ryght Site Feasibility: Automates feasibility polling by converting PDF requests into web forms and pre-populating them with past responses. Real-time dashboards are available for both sponsors and sites.
• Ryght Trial Exchange: A matching system where sponsors list recruiting studies and Ryght’s AI recommends high-fit sites, initiating connections based on mutual interest. Sites use it for free; sponsors only pay when matches occur.
• Ryght Trial Navigator: A generative AI tool for managing and comparing trial protocols, refining eligibility criteria, and generating trial documents. The pro version integrates with community physician networks to boost patient referrals.
• Write It Ryght: Automates creation of follow-on trial documents (ICF, IB, IRB, RFI) based on trial protocols and pre-set templates, with access to biomedical literature and compliance-ready formatting.
• Ryght Copilots (Agents): Domain-specific tools for searching, summarizing, and comparing clinical, preclinical, and biomedical data. Includes direct integrations with PubMed, ClinVar, and ClinicalTrials.gov, and secure connectors to internal company data.
• Platform & Developer Tools: Enables users to create and customize apps and agents via APIs and scalable infrastructure, supporting both non-technical and developer-driven customization.

The platform can reportedly generate feasibility forms (documents trial sponsors use to assess and activate sites) within minutes, pre-populating fields that traditionally take hours to complete manually. These are reviewed and submitted by human users. Ryght claims the tool reduces the trial activation timeline from 3-6 months down to three weeks. It also asserts that failed trial sites can cost sponsors up to $1.4 billion, framing its platform as a preventative tool for such losses. Some pharmaceutical customers have reportedly signed six-figure deals for access, though specific names were not disclosed.

Ryght differentiates itself by emphasizing its use of agentic AI, a framework where autonomous software agents act on behalf of users, and its global digital twin network. While competitors like IQVIA, Castor, Unlearn.AI, and Altis Labs are developing automation or simulation tools for trials, Ryght co-founder Simon Arkell told Axios that he is not aware of any direct competitors using agentic and generative AI to create digital twins for every clinical trial site globally.

The company plans to grow its workforce from to about 35 people in the next six months and is preparing for a $20 million Series A round in early 2026.

Topics: Startups & Deals