Eric Lefkofsky on clinical trial failure
From Tempus AI Investor Day 2026 | Precision Medicine Diagnostic Data Library Sells Fuel Growth Plans · · Investing 101
“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 phase 3. There's no other reason, right? Like literally, it's like that. So, both of those are solvable with real world data at scale.”
On , Eric Lefkofsky, Cofounder at Tempus, spoke about clinical trial failure during Tempus AI Investor Day 2026 | Precision Medicine Diagnostic Data Library Sells Fuel Growth Plans on Investing 101.
About Eric Lefkofsky
At Tempus AI’s 2026 Investor Day, Eric Lefkofsky described the company’s founding mission as using artificial intelligence to unlock precision medicine. He stated that Tempus has built a “connected ecosystem” that generates data from clinical workflows, turns that data into insights, and feeds those insights back into the healthcare system, which he called “sustainable.” Lefkofsky said the company’s data and modeling tools are used across the drug R&D lifecycle, from early-stage discovery through commercialization, and that Tempus licenses multimodal data to biopharma customers. Lefkofsky expressed confidence that data, AI, and technology will “permeate drug discovery and development and healthcare,” adding that “every industry who ever has said it’s not going to happen has been washed away by technology.” He predicted that real-world data insights will eventually be layered onto every therapeutically relevant biomarker. He also speculated that “there will come a time when no phase 3s ever fail,” attributing failures to either a misunderstood mechanism of action or a mismatch between phase 2 and phase 3 results.