Grounded · Verifiable AI for biotech finance
Stop chasing the numbers behind the runway.
Start signing them off.
If you're here from a one-page card: the card used public filings only and stopped where the public record stops. This is the part where Grounded reads your own files.
A biotech finance month is spent chasing numbers that live in different places: the accrual in a spreadsheet, spend by programme and phase in the model, runway in the cash plan, and three forecast versions where only one is the one the board approved. AI hasn't changed that, because a number you can't trace is a number you have to redo. Grounded reads the pack, the models and the contracts you already produce and answers with the cell, clause or slide each figure came from. Verified, not just fast.
- Every number to its cell, clause or slide
- Says so when the files can't support it
- Starts on the files you already produce, no IT project
You ask
"What is accrued on the Phase 2 study this month?"
It answers from the cell
And when the files can't support it"I can't confirm that from the documents provided."
01 · What Grounded is
An analyst who has read everything your company holds.
Point it at the shared drive, the contracts, the board pack, the model, and ask. What is accrued against invoiced this month. Spend to date and plan-to-go on a programme. Runway on the case the board approved. Every number comes back with the cell, clause or slide it came from, one click away.
Most of those questions wait until the reforecast, because each one costs someone a day. So the runway on the slide is last month's, and the accrual rolls forward. That is what retrieval by hand costs, and nobody has a spare day. Grounded makes the question cost a minute, so it gets asked.
Citations harvested, not written
Every reference is taken from what the system actually retrieved, never composed by the model. Click one and you land on the cell, the clause, the slide.
It refuses
If your files don't hold the answer, you get "I can't confirm that", not a plausible number.
Files first, no IT project
Excel and PDF, the pack you already produce, in your own private workspace. Connect the ledger or the model later, when there is a check worth running against them.
47%
Almost half of a finance team's effort goes on collecting and validating data.
FP&A Trends Survey 2026. In a biotech close, most of that is the accrual and the runway.
Source: FP&A Trends, "Designing the FP&A Operating Model for the AI Era" (16 Jul 2026), citing the FP&A Trends Survey 2026.
02 · Then build on it
Checks that run every close, each one showing its working.
Every answer is traceable, so you can put checks on top of it. Set up the ones your close already depends on and let them run against the latest files.
Accrued vs invoiced
This month's accrual against the invoices and the work order, and how it was built.
Shows its working
Runway on the board version
The latest forecast against the snapshot the board approved, and what moved.
Shows its working
Spend vs plan-to-go
By programme and phase, and which programmes moved since the last forecast.
Shows its working
The chasing goes, the sign-off stays yours.
03 · Twelve minutes of it working
The worst number in a biotech close is the trial accrual.
It lives across CRO contracts, work orders and enrolment reports, the invoices always lag, and the auditors always ask about it. This walkthrough follows one trial through the whole finance function of a fictional biotech, Super Fancy Bio. The accrual builds itself, line by line. A $2.1M gap gets found without anyone pointing at it, then explained from the contract, down to the clause. And at the end, a press release where every number was already checked on the way in.
- Jump in anywhere
- 011:31Estimate. The trial accrual, line by line, every line cited.
- 022:33Verify. The board pack doesn't tie. It finds the $2.1M on its own.
- 032:56The June control. It won't invent a gap that isn't there.
- 043:13Explain. It read the CRO contract. Clause cited.
- 053:48Scan. A month of GL postings against the policy manual.
- 064:58The notebook. What the team knows that the files don't. An auditor answered, an honest refusal, and a note it labels as a note.
- 077:30Three kinds of knowledge. Documents, analyst notes, web. Labelled, never blurred.
- 088:30Advise. Commission a memo, working papers included.
- 0910:42Communicate. The press release, with receipts.
04 · The twenty questions
Twenty questions a new biotech board asks the pack.
Every card carries the same twenty, put to the company's public documents. Filed accounts answer five to nine of them, depending on whether a profit and loss account was filed. The rest live in the company's own files. The peer lines on the cards come from the filed accounts of BIA members at the same stage: spend per head, R&D credit as a share of spend, audit mix, values listed and peers never named.
- Public filings answer it
- Filings start it, your files finish it
- Only your files hold it
| # | The question | Where it lives | The file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash and runway | |||
| 01 | What is cash today, and runway on the current plan, excluding unsigned BD?The cash plan: inflows excluding new BD, bonus and credit timing, interest assumptions. | Your files | |
| 02 | What was cash at the last year end?Balance sheet; share capital and premium movement. | Public filings | |
| 04 | What did the last filed accounts say about going concern?Filings, if the regime requires the paragraph; otherwise your files. | Filings, then your files | |
| 05 | What are we spending per month, and how did that change year on year?Filings, if a P&L was filed; otherwise the management accounts. | Filings, then your files | |
| 08 | What is our monthly burn excluding one-offs, and what were the one-offs?The cash plan adjustments. | Your files | |
| Compliance and evidence | |||
| 03 | How much of this year's cost base does the R&D tax credit fund, and when does the cash arrive?Filings give the amount (tax note, corporation tax recoverable); your files give the timing and the evidence behind the claim. | Filings, then your files | |
| 16 | Are we audited, and if not, when does that change?Filings give the regime; your files give the size thresholds and what investors require. | Filings, then your files | |
| 19 | Which grants are live, claimed versus received, and when is the next audit?Filings give the award records; your files give the claims and the evidence. | Filings, then your files | |
| 20 | What entities and currencies do we operate in, and what is the FX exposure?Filings give the subsidiaries note; your files give the entity ledgers and the FX policy. | Filings, then your files | |
| People and headcount | |||
| 06 | What is spend per head, and how much of the work is outsourced versus in-house?Filings give the ratio (average employees against spend); your files give the vendor split. | Filings, then your files | |
| 07 | Headcount today against plan, open roles, and the cost of the open roles?The headcount plan: active and open roles at loaded cost. | Your files | |
| Programmes and phase | |||
| 09 | What phase is the lead programme in, and where are the sites?The trial registry, press. | Public filings | |
| 10 | What have we spent to date on the lead programme, and what is plan-to-go by phase?The project plan by phase, timesheets, vendor lines. | Your files | |
| CRO, sites and commitments | |||
| 11 | What is accrued versus invoiced on the trial this month?CRO and site contracts, work orders, enrolment reports. | Your files | |
| 17 | What are open PO commitments by vendor not yet in the ledger?The PO register. | Your files | |
| 18 | Who are the ten largest vendors this year, and which programmes do they sit on?The vendor hierarchy in the ledger. | Your files | |
| Milestones and partner income | |||
| 12 | Which milestones fall in the next twelve months, at what probability, contract value versus risk-adjusted?Partner agreements, phase timelines, risk by gate. | Your files | |
| 13 | What collaboration income was recognised last year, and how does it reconcile to announced deals?Filings give turnover, deferred income notes and the press; your files give the agreements. | Filings, then your files | |
| Versions and variance | |||
| 14 | What changed between the last two forecasts, and why?The version-to-version bridge with commentary. | Your files | |
| 15 | Which forecast did the board approve, and how does the latest compare with it and with budget?The version key: budget, latest, board-approved snapshot. | Your files | |
Load the files those answers live in and the twenty stop being a list of gaps. Each answer comes back with the row, the clause or the slide behind it, and the same twenty become your golden questions: the scoreboard a pilot is marked against.
05 · The biotech work behind it
Built by someone who ran biotech FP&A.
I ran biotech FP&A before I built any of this. At Exscientia I built the planning system the way I think it should be built: finance, workforce, portfolio and clinical planning on one backbone, six linked models fed from the ledger and the HR system, board packs at one end and CRO costing at the other. The hundred or so questions that system existed to answer are the source of the twenty above and of the longer set a biotech tenant starts with.
Finance
ledger, model, cash plan
Workforce
headcount plan, loaded cost
Portfolio
programmes, phases, gates
Clinical
studies, sites, timelines
It doesn't have to stop at finance. Workforce, portfolio and clinical planning belong on the same backbone, and Grounded reads your files that way. Load the headcount plan, the programme timelines and the study updates beside the finance drive and ask across the lot.
06 · Bring your own pack
Thirty minutes on your calendar.
Bring the questions from the card, or your own, and watch them answered with the source, or refused, the same way.
- Your questions, live
- Nothing to install
- No pitch unless you ask for one
If thirty minutes turns into "do it on our pack", the next step is afixed-fee pilot on your own close pack: success criteria you define in writing, your golden questions as the scoreboard, and an honest report if we miss them.
Super Fancy Bio is fictional. Every document and number in the walkthrough comes from a synthetic dataset built to behave like a real biotech reporting pack, planted errors included. Your data would be your own, in your own environment.