Quris-AI

Founders, and two founding dates in the sources

Quris-AI, also known as Quris, was founded by Isaac Bentwich and Yossi Haran. The official management page presents Bentwich as founder and CEO and Haran as co-founder and chief technology officer. Crunchbase says the company was founded in Tel Aviv in 2019, while Globes described its official founding in early 2020. So there is no single founding year here. The company presents operations in Boston and Tel Aviv. The product deals with evaluating drugs, by connecting real biological experiments with computer models of response and safety.

The data is created in tissues on a chip

The platform uses tiny models of human tissues on a chip. According to the official technology page, drugs already known to be safe or dangerous are tested in them, and sensors measure the tissue's response. The data is classified and used to retrain a machine learning model. The model is then used to predict the response to candidate compounds. So the AI does not rely only on a text database or on results from mouse experiments. The company also develops the experimental system that produces data suited to the prediction it wants to deliver to drug development teams.

Variation between tissues, and the limit of a single model

The website notes that training on a representation of a single patient is limited. The company describes using stem cells from different sources to represent genetic variation, as part of a collaboration with the New York Stem Cell Foundation. In October 2024 Quris bought the assets of the American company Nortis, including kidney-on-a-chip technology, to integrate into the platform. This is a biological limitation that appears in the description of the method itself: the response of tissue from one source is not enough to represent the variation between people. Globes described the link between tissue automation and response prediction as part of the company's founding. The product is not a computing chip that replaces a processor, but a system in which a biological experimental component feeds the prediction model.

The seed round and the SoftBank investment

On 20 December 2022 Quris announced an additional investment of $9 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The announcement stated that total seed funding had reached $37 million. Existing investors also took part, including GlenRock Capital, iAngels, Welltech Ventures and Richter Group. The company earmarked the money for advancing the platform, expanding the team and partnerships. As of September 2026 the company is private.

Merck's use and the preclinical stage

On 7 January 2025 the company announced that Germany's Merck KGaA had adopted the platform for evaluating the safety of small molecules before clinical trials. This is Merck of Darmstadt, not the American company with a similar name. The announcement described a validation test that dealt with detecting drug-induced liver injury. The result and the comparison with other methods are claims from the company's announcement. The adoption is described for selected preclinical candidates, not as a replacement for human trials. The documented use is early screening and support for development decisions.