When Europe II invested in CluePoints in 2020, the company was already a leader in risk-based quality management (RBQM). Its cloud-based platform—powered by advanced statistical models—helped users identify, manage and document risks that could affect clinical trial outcomes.
With Summit’s support, CluePoints deepened its investment in R&D, expanded its team, accelerated product development and strengthened its go-to-market strategy. These efforts helped position the company to quickly capitalize on the growing potential of AI, expanding its platform with solutions designed to improve data quality, enhance patient safety, reduce manual work and accelerate timelines.
Today, CluePoints’ AI-powered solutions are helping life sciences organizations translate technical innovation into operational efficiency—and offering insight into how others might do the same.
Shifting Dynamics in Life Sciences
Historically, the clinical trial process has been highly manual and slow to evolve, characterized by regulatory complexity, safety protocols, risk aversion and legacy infrastructure.
In recent years, however, we believe several factors have prompted a meaningful shift, including:
- The disruption of trial site access during COVID-19 pushed Clinical Research Organizations and their pharmaceutical sponsors to adopt digital tools to maintain trial continuity.
- An ever-increasing volume of clinical trial data has created larger and more complex, but well-structured datasets that are well-suited for AI applications.
- Persistent cost and time pressures have intensified the need for scalable solutions that improve efficiency without compromising quality.
For CluePoints, these trends notably converged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company played a critical role in supporting several high-profile COVID-19 vaccine trials, with its RBQM platform supporting remote oversight at scale, helping ensure data integrity and continuity under various constraints.
We believe this work demonstrated both the resilience of CluePoints’ platform and its broader applicability in a rapidly changing environment. In our view, it underscored the potential for technology to materially improve how trials are managed—advancing both speed and quality—and laid a strong foundation for the company’s next phase of product development.
CluePoints’ Approach to AI
While organizations continue to proceed with caution and widespread adoption remains gradual, we are seeing some pharmaceutical and biotech companies beginning to incorporate AI into key workflows. We believe CluePoints has been at the forefront of this shift. The company has developed a pragmatic, targeted approach to applying AI, with solutions designed to address real operational needs and deliver measurable value across the clinical trial lifecycle. These solutions include:
- Intelligent Medical Coding, which leverages deep learning to suggest standardized medical codes with accuracy, improving the speed and precision of a task traditionally handled by large clinical teams.
- Intelligent Query Detection, which applies large language models to help surface meaningful data inconsistencies and reduce the volume of false positives that require manual review.
- CluePoints has also embedded AI into its core RBQM platform, further supporting the process of managing risks and signals surfacing during a clinical trial.
Importantly, these tools are designed to support—not replace—clinical teams, supporting faster, more informed decision-making while maintaining high standards of oversight and quality.
Laying the Groundwork for Scalable AI
As more companies explore how to incorporate AI into their platforms, we believe CluePoints stands out not only for the solutions it brought to market, but for the way it approached building them. We see three key attributes that enabled CluePoints to effectively develop and scale AI solutions:
- A strong technical foundation. CluePoints built its AI capabilities on top of a mature software platform and years of experience supporting clinical trials. The company’s access to large volumes of structured, standardized clinical trial data gathered through long-standing customer relationships provided a rich foundation for training and applying machine learning models.
- Customer-driven development. In a sector where credibility is essential, CluePoints prioritized close engagement with customers throughout the product development process. Early collaborations with large sponsors not only provided valuable data but also helped validate new tools ahead of broader market rollout.
- Specialized, highly experienced talent. CluePoints built a lean but effective R&D team by hiring professionals with deep experience in both life sciences and technical domains. This team brought a strong understanding of industry dynamics and developed a clear perspective on where AI could deliver real operational value. Working closely with product leaders and customers, they helped shape solutions that we believe are reliable and responsive to market needs.
Looking Ahead
While AI continues to evolve rapidly, we believe its role in life sciences will likely remain focused on areas where it can meaningfully improve accuracy, efficiency and patient outcomes. In our view, some of the most promising use cases include automating manual clinical workflows, supporting patient recruitment and site selection, improving real-world evidence integration and analysis, and enhancing data interoperability across healthcare and research systems.
Growth Timeline
January 1, 2024
Acquired by Vista Equity Partners
Rebrands as InvoiceCloud
Began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KVYO on September 20, 2023
January 1, 2023
Launched Klaviyo Customer Data Platform (CDP) and reviews - Surpassed 130,000 customers
January 1, 2022
Entered into a strategic partnership with Shopify, including capital investment - Launched partnership with Wix and completed first acquisition, Napkin.io - Opened Sydney office
January 1, 2021
Completes IPO on September 23 (NYSE: ESMT)
January 1, 2020
Rebranded to EngageSmart
Introduced support for Apple Pay, Google Pay
January 1, 2017
Entered the wellness vertical with the acquisition of SImplePractice.
January 1, 2021
Raised additional capital in a funding round led by Sands Capital - Launched SMS product - Announced native integration with Prestashop and partnership with WooCommerce
January 1, 2020
Raised approximately $200 million in new capital from Summit Partners and Accel
January 1, 2019
Raised approximately $150 million in capital from Summit Partners Opened London office
January 1, 2009
InvoiceCloud founded
Focused on local government and utility verticals
January 1, 2018
Surpassed 10,000 customers
January 1, 2017
Launched a partnership with BigCommerce
June 1, 2016
Surpassed 1,000 customers
January 1, 2016
Raised new capital in a funding round led by Astrial Capital
January 1, 2015
Received SAFE financing led by Accomplice
January 1, 2014
Surpassed 100 customers
January 1, 2012
Klaviyo founded
January 1, 2021
Completes IPO (NASDAQ: LFST) on June 10
January 6, 2020
Announces majority recapitalization
January 1, 2020
LifeStance completes 50th acquisition. With COVID onset, transitioned from 300 telepsych visits per week to more than 40,000
January 1, 2020
2.3M patient visits, 370 centers and 3,000+ clinicians
January 1, 2019
1.4M patient visits, 170 centers and 1,400 clinicians
January 1, 2018
930k patient visits, 125 centers and 800 clinicians
January 1, 2017
LifeStance founded with backing from Summit Partners and Silversmith Capital Partners
January 1, 2019
Launced charity streaming - live streaming fundraising
General Atlantic invests alongside Summit and management team
January 1, 2018
Entered the non-profit vertical with the acquisition of DonorDrive
Introduced and integrated telehealth solution
January 1, 2015
Summit Partners invests
Entered the healthcare vertical with the acquisition of HealthPay24
Don't delete this element! Use it to style the player! :)
.png)
In our view, the CluePoints story illustrates that AI adoption in life sciences is not just a technical challenge—it’s also a product, operational and organizational one. We believe the company’s thoughtful, targeted approach has delivered measurable value, helping to improve trial execution in a field where precision and trust are critical, and in bringing therapeutics to patients faster.
In 2024, CluePoints received a significant growth investment led by EQT. We believe the company’s continued growth and expansion underscores its leadership in AI-enabled clinical trial solutions and its continued potential to shape the future of clinical development. For growth-stage companies navigating similar dynamics, we believe CluePoints offers a compelling example of how to build value at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
Related Experience
About the Authors
* There can be no assurance that the performance of any such professional serves as an indicator of future performance. There is no guarantee that Summit's investment professionals will successfully implement the Summit funds’ investment strategy. A complete list of Summit employees is available upon request.
About Summit Partners
Summit Partners is a leading growth-focused investment firm, investing across growth sectors of the economy. Today, Summit manages more than $45 billion in capital and targets growth equity investments of $10 million – $500 million per company. Since the firm’s founding in 1984, Summit has invested in more than 550 companies in the technology, healthcare and life sciences, and growth products and services sectors.