A diabetes startup that uses artificial intelligence, Bigfoot Biomedical, has just announced that it scored a total of $55 million in Series B equity financing with new investments from Abbott and other existing funders.
This funding is the culmination of earlier round funding that the company has been raising since late last year, including $37 million that it raised in December and an additional $18 million, which it announced this morning. The latest announcement now brings the company’s total equity raised to $90 million.
“We are excited to welcome Abbott to our list of investors,” Jeffrey Brewer, president and CEO of Bigfoot Biomedical, said in a statement. “Abbott’s inclusion in our financing speaks to our two companies’ alignment of vision for changing the paradigm of care for people with insulin-requiring diabetes.”
The Milpitas, California-based company focuses on using connected devices like smartphones as well as machine learning to automate insulin delivery for individuals with Type 1 diabetes and insulin requiring Type 2 diabetes.
According to its website, the company will be announcing a "pivotal" trial in late 2018. Once the trial is completed the company can submit the product to the FDA and, if cleared, the company said that it would anticipate a product launch date of 2020.
In July Bigfoot Biomedical entered into an agreement with Abbott for the purposes of developing and commercializing diabetes management systems and integrating Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre glucose sensing technology with Bigfoot’s insulin delivery system.
The two companies agreed that Abbott will supply the glucose measurement sensors for all of Bigfoot’s insulin delivery systems in the US. At the same time, Bigfoot will develop and commercialize several systems that use Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre sensor technology, which include systems designed to perform auto-titration for Bigfoot’s connected insulin injection devices and automated insulin delivery using Bigfoot’s insulin infusion platform.
Bigfoot was founded in 2014 and originally called SmartLoop Labs, but changed its name to Bigfoot Biomedical in 2015. It closed its Series A funding in 2016 with $35.5 million.
