Eric Lefkofsky is a renowned entrepreneur who has made a significant impact in e-commerce, logistics, and health technology. Born on September 2, 1969, in West Bloomfield, Michigan, Eric co-founded the highly successful company Groupon and later launched Tempus, aiming to transform cancer treatment.
With a mindset focused on innovation and a strong commitment to community impact, Eric effectively balances sharp business acumen with a dedication to giving back.
Eric grew up in a vibrant Jewish household that nurtured his early curiosity. His father, a structural engineer, and his mother, a teacher, both had a major influence on him.
From his time as a camp counselor at Tamarack until his graduation from the University of Michigan with honors, his passion for learning held strong. Having accomplished the Juris Doctor in 1993, Eric opted for entrepreneurship rather than law: a path of innovation, disruption, and bold ideas.
Eric’s career resembles a startup playbook. He first co-founded Brandon Apparel and then launched Starbelly. However, he later sold it to Halo Industries, where he continued to serve as Chief Operating Officer.
Under Eric’s leadership, InnerWorkings and Echo Global Logistics went public, and he played a key role in MediaBank’s $1.5 billion merger, which garnered significant media attention. Eric also funded ThePoint.comwith $1 million, which later transformed into Groupon, a global tech success. His most successful venture to date is Tempus, which aims to bring data-driven hope to cancer care. For Eric, disruption isn’t just a job; it’s part of his nature.
Tempus AI has initiated a series of important AI opportunities to advance precision medicine and improve patient care utilizing artificial intelligence:
Tempus Loop: It is an AI-powered oncology target discovery and validation platform that integrates real-world patient data, human-derived biological models, and CRISPR screens to identify and validate new drug targets quickly. This accelerates drug discovery timelines while providing valuable clinical relevance by aligning patient data to patient-derived organoids (PDOs).
Precision Meets AI: Tempus AI is expanding its care platform, Tempus Next, to include breast cancer, utilizing AI to analyze patient data, identify gaps in treatment, and provide real-time and guideline-based recommendations that will assist physicians to provide faster, smarter, and more individualized cancer care at scale.
Tempus and Boehringer: Tempus AI has partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim in the multi-year venture for the advancement of cancer research. It is the collaboration that uses real-world patient data together with advanced analytics to help drug discovery, and ultimately to facilitate more refined, life-saving cancer treatments.
Tempus and AstraZeneca: Tempus AI with $200 million foundation model partnership with AstraZeneca and Pathos is advancing the future of oncology. Tempus is merging expansive clinical data sets with advanced AI to accelerate diagnosis, reshape drug discovery, and develop truly personalized cancer therapies.
Integrating Multimodal Data: Tempus AI's Fuses program is redefining precision care by integrating rich multimodal datasets with advanced AI models. It accelerates theranostics, uncovers patterns of drug resistance, and delivers predictive diagnostics, bringing truly personalized data-informed decisions closer to real-world clinical practice.
Tempus and Illumina: Tempus AI and Illumina are transforming healthcare by creating precision medicine solutions that leverage AI and genomic science. Leveraging multimodal data, their partnership trains advanced algorithms to make molecular profiling a standard across cancer, cardiology, neurology, and many more.
GSK and Tempus: Tempus AI partners with GSK to enhance drug discovery using its powerful AI platform and one of the world's largest de-identified patient datasets. The partnership enhances trial design, accelerates recruitment, and unlocks transformational treatments in precision medicine.
AI Olivia: Tempus AI introduced Olivia, a cutting-edge personal health concierge app powered by AI. By unifying health records, device data, and clinical insights, Olivia helps patients take charge of their care with clarity, confidence, and real-time, personalized guidance.
Eric is a co-founder of various transformative corporations and is also the leader of such companies as Groupon, Tempus, Mediaocean, InnerWorkings, and Uptake. He has been working in e-commerce, logistics, and AI-medicine domains, pushing the quality frontier far ahead of what any of the previous players have been able to set.
Besides being an entrepreneur, he is an author, an educator, and sits on the boards of several distinguished cultural and scientific institutions, thus showcasing his long-term commitment to innovation, leadership, and value creation.
Eric has amassed a substantial net worth of nearly $6.1 billion, positioning him as one of the wealthiest and most successful business individuals in America. His wealth grew by more than $1.3 billion in a single year and primarily due to the benefits of his strong investments and businesses with disproportionate value creation, from the worldwide speedy rollout of Groupon to the emergence of Tempus as a leading health tech company,
Lefkofsky has built a robust array of successful businesses. He has also dedicated a meaningful part of his wealth to charities, demonstrating a focus on the social good alongside financial success.
Eric Lefkosky's existence within corporate America is complicated by many allegations of mismanagement, overstated claims, and questionably illegal financial gains.
Leadership Under Fire: In his debut as Groupon's co-CEO, Eric blamed former CEO Andrew Mason for the company's poor performance, even as he downplayed his role in the company's day-to-day operations.. Former insiders disclosed that Leonard tightly controlled everything going on at Groupon, raising questions about responsibilities and bringing public protests over his secret leadership.
Profit Promise Fallout: Before Groupon's IPO, Eric predictably vowed that the company would be "crazy profitable" - in hindsight, that may have been foolish to make. The SEC filing for the IPO conditionally requested that the investor pool not use Eric's comments when deciding on investing in the company. This raised broader concerns about the trust of investors and solicited a flurry of investor lawsuits.
Fraud Allegations: Eric has faced allegations of fraud linked to failed ventures, including Starbelly and class-action lawsuits. Critics cite a pattern of inflated claims, aggressive exits, and SEC scrutiny during Groupon’s IPO, raising concerns about transparency and ethical business practices.
Pattern of Deception: The Founder and CEO of Tempus AI has courted controversy for years. Accused of pump-and-dump schemes and questionable financial tactics, many of his ventures, from Brandon Apparel to Groupon, ended in collapses, lawsuits, and staggering payouts.