Peppermint raises $4.7M to fix clinical trial billing and payments with AI

Daniel Levi Posted On October 8, 2026

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Clinical research startup Peppermint has raised $4.7 million in seed funding to solve a costly problem in clinical trials: hospitals and research sites often wait months to collect payments for work they’ve already completed. The San Francisco-based startup is using AI to automate billing, track outstanding payments, and help research organizations get paid faster.

The round was led by Moxxie, with participation from Homebrew, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Layout Ventures, Digital Health Venture Partners, Night Capital, and angel investors Benjamin Mann and Evan Moore.

The funding comes as clinical research organizations face mounting financial pressure. Drug development has advanced significantly, yet the financial systems supporting clinical trials remain fragmented. Research sites frequently rely on spreadsheets, disconnected software, and manual reconciliation to track what pharmaceutical sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) owe them.

The consequences go beyond administrative headaches.

According to a 2024 survey by the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS), roughly 30% of research sites reported having more than one-third of their outstanding receivables overdue by at least 90 days. Half had three months or less of operating capital available.

For organizations running expensive clinical studies, delayed payments can strain cash flow, disrupt operations, and divert staff from patient care and research.

From Robinhood’s Financial Infrastructure to Clinical Trial Payments

Peppermint was founded by David Freeman and VJ Thurimella, two fintech veterans who previously worked together at X1, the credit card startup Robinhood acquired.

Freeman was X1’s first business hire, and Thurimella was its first engineer. The pair helped build the financial infrastructure behind the credit card business that became part of Robinhood’s Gold Card offering.

Their experience processing financial transactions exposed an opportunity in healthcare: clinical research organizations handle large sums of money but often lack the tools to track revenue, reconcile payments, and measure the financial performance of individual studies.

“At X1 and Robinhood we helped build systems designed for precision and scale, to process billions of dollars every year,” said Freeman. “We’re bringing that architecture to clinical research, converting earnings into friction-free collections that also provide CROs and sponsors with cleaner data from the source.”

Peppermint connects to a research site’s existing clinical trial management software and uses AI to cross-reference completed work against study contracts and payment records. The platform generates invoices continuously, identifies outstanding balances, and manages collections with support from human billing specialists.

Rather than requiring hospitals and research teams to replace their existing software, Peppermint works with the systems they already use.

The goal is to reduce billing errors, eliminate repetitive administrative work, and give research organizations a clearer picture of how much revenue each study generates and what it costs to operate.

Peppermint says its customers have collected revenue three times faster, reduced overdue invoices by threefold, and recovered 20% of staff time previously spent on billing. These performance figures are company-reported and have not been independently verified.

The startup said the number of studies managed through its platform tripled over the past three months, though it did not disclose its total customer count or revenue.

With the new funding, Peppermint plans to move beyond billing and collections into clinical trial budget negotiations, expense management, and financial analytics.

“There is no standard financial infrastructure for clinical trial billing today — every dollar a site is owed has to be reconstructed by hand from disconnected systems,” said Alex Roetter, Managing Director and General Partner at Moxxie. “Peppermint is bringing the discipline of modern fintech to one of healthcare’s least-examined back offices.”

Peppermint is betting that fixing the financial side of clinical research can help hospitals and research organizations spend less time chasing payments and more time conducting studies. For an industry focused on developing new treatments, keeping the organizations running those trials financially healthy could prove just as important as improving the technology behind the science.

Peppermint raises $4.7M to fix clinical trial billing and payments with AI

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Peppermint raises $4.7M to fix clinical trial billing and payments with AI