Mere months after closing a massive $830 million funding round, Caris Life Sciences has tapped a former Medtronic executive to take charge of its money management. As chief financial officer, Mike Weinstein will oversee cash flow both into and out of the company, as it attracts even more venture funding to support the development of its genetic sequencing platform.
“We are thrilled to welcome Mike to the Caris team,” said CEO David Halbert. “His passion for our mission, industry experience and strategic thinking will provide strong leadership as we position Caris for the next phase; expanding our offering to include both tissue and blood (measuring all coding genes) across hereditary and acquired variants, resulting in the most comprehensive offering ever.”
In addition to the CFO role, Weinstein has also been named an executive vice president.
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He joins Caris after a three-year stint at Medtronic, serving as the medtech giant’s senior vice president of strategy, as well as a member of its executive committee beginning in 2020. Weinstein helped to shape Medtronic’s overall global strategy, spanning business development, spending and investments.
Before joining Medtronic in 2018, he spent more than 25 years at J.P. Morgan, where he was managing director of the healthcare group within the investment banking company’s equity research segment. For the bulk of his time there, Weinstein was J.P. Morgan’s senior medical technology analyst, a role that earned him a spot in Institutional Investor magazine’s analyst hall of fame.
“I am delighted to join Caris at such an exciting time," Weinstein said in a statement. “In my 25-plus years, I’ve seen few companies with Caris’ potential to grow and to change the way we diagnose, monitor, treat and care for hundreds of thousands of cancer patients each year.”
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Caris’ platform profiles all 22,000 genes in a patient’s DNA and RNA and identifies cancer-related pathogens, bacteria, viruses and fungi using exome, transcriptome and cancer proteome sequencing technology. As of March of this year, it also offers human leukocyte antigen genotype reporting to predict how a cancer patient will react to various immunotherapies.
The comprehensive profile is then analyzed by Caris’ artificial intelligence, which guides oncologists as they determine the best course of treatment for each patient’s genetic makeup.
The $830 million financing that closed in May followed hot on the heels of another $310 million the company had raked in just about half a year before. Those funding rounds brought Caris’ external funding since 2018 to about $1.3 billion and bumped up the company’s valuation to more than $7.8 billion.
With a focus on fast-paced growth—and hundreds of millions in the bank to back it—Caris has been expanding more than just its platform. Shortly before bringing Weinstein onto the team, in late September, it welcomed Milan Radovich, Ph.D., as chief precision medicine officer, a new role leading the company’s biomarker discovery and drug discovery and development teams.