Yahoo Finance Larry Ellison’s Cancer Software Startup Project Ronin Is Closing
(Bloomberg) -- Project Ronin, a cancer-focused software startup co-founded by Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, is shutting down.
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The startup “will have a permanent mass layoff in connection with the closing of the company,” executives said to in a memo to employees to Friday. Ronin had about 150 employees, according to people familiar with the matter.
Ronin was founded by Ellison, Dave Hodgson, and David Agus, the oncologist who cared for Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs. Ellison funded the project, the people said, with its first seed round coming in 2018, according to Crunchbase.
The startup’s products were intended to quickly analyze data within electronic medical records systems such as those made by Epic Systems Corp. and Cerner, Hodgson said in a December marketing video. Oracle, where Ellison also is a co-founder and chief technology officer, acquired Cerner in June 2022 and has been pursuing similar efforts to modernize clinical software.
Ronin struggled to get paying customers and didn’t have the finances to continue operating, executives said during an all-hands meeting Friday when the shutdown was announced, according to three attendees who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Project Ronin didn’t respond to requests for comment. Ellison couldn’t be reached for comment.
Ellison has touted a Ronin partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center backed by Oracle’s computing power. The Texas-based hospital has “actually shown if you use this system, you reduce hospital admissions and readmissions by 30% — that’s a stunning number,” Ellison said on a March 2023 Oracle earnings call.
Project Ronin is built on Oracle’s software — in the fiscal year ending in May 2023, Ronin paid Oracle $374,000 for cloud infrastructure, applications and platform products, according to a regulatory filing.
Oracle recently appointed Seema Verma, a former Trump administration official, to lead its health-focused business containing Cerner and the clinical life sciences division. Oracle has also conducted job cuts, closed offices and worked to overhaul Cerner’s hospital-focused applications.
Ellison is known as a prominent financial backer of health and longevity research. Agus, one of Ronin’s co-founders, also is chief executive officer of the Ellison Institute of Technology, a medical and scientific research group in Los Angeles. The two have opened a health spa retreat called Sensei on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which is owned by Ellison.
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