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Eric Lefkofsky

Cofounder, Tempus AI, Inc.

Search every verified Eric Lefkofsky interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Eric Lefkofsky, founder and CEO of Tempus AI, discussed the role of artificial intelligence in healthcare during a September 2026 appearance on CNBC's "The Exchange." He cited the Merck and Moderna personalized cancer vaccine as an example of moving from targeted therapies to personalized therapies, noting that such approaches involve sequencing a patient and building a drug based on their unique molecular profile. Lefkofsky also commented on calls to slow AI development, stating that Tempus is one of the largest users of AI models in healthcare and that the models used six months to a year ago were already "extraordinarily powerful." On Tempus AI's second quarter 2026 earnings call in July 2026, Lefkofsky addressed the company's financial results and strategic developments. He described the market for minimal residual disease (MRD) testing as a "$20 billion plus market" and said that bringing Personalis under Tempus's roof would accelerate commercial adoption of its MRD test and strengthen the company's multimodal data flywheel. He also characterized the data business as "on fire," citing increased momentum in signing deals and growing demand from customers seeking access to Tempus's data and its Lens platform, including GPU provisioning.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“Everything pales in comparison to mistakes and errors everything and it's all a rounding error all the diagnostics and all the profits of the insurance companies of the profits of drug companies they're like rounding errors, to air in waste and mistakes in waste and cost so we spent about 6 trillion on healthcare something like you know the half - 2 trillion is error mistaken waste meaning that you coming here in the”

“We sequence the human genome about 20 plus years ago to the time some believably offensive the cost come way down and so tech companies have been come very large sequence like a million to say here are some very large number and basically generating the data that positions the needed the physicians needed to put them on radiotherapy or chemotherapy are targeted therapy is an incredible lens to be able to figure out l”

“I think provocatively said like there will come a time when no phase 3s ever fail and some company will be responsible for that. If you think about it it's not I know it sounds crazy but it's just like from a tech perspective of course it's going to happen. I mean, if a large phase 3 fails, you either didn't understand the mechanism of action that drives your drug or what you saw in a phase 2 is not being seen in a p”

“If I were the head of HHS or CMS, I'd find a way to responsibly pay for AI — provide provisional reimbursement tied to regulatory review: tell me it works, prove it is safe and effective, we'll pay for it for two or three years and then require real‑world evidence of impact.”

“Just start with the fact that we spend something like $6 trillion a year and don't produce outcomes that are really any better than the rest of the world despite the fact that we spend something like the next largest 18 or 19 largest countries in the world.”

“One of the single biggest challenges in this system is error, mistake and waste — in a roughly $6 trillion system those mistakes probably account for maybe a trillion or a trillion and a half dollars; total drug profits are like $125 billion and payers make maybe $50 billion, so when you think about where the money is, it's in reducing waste.”

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