San Francisco-based corporate card startup Brex today launched a corporate card specifically tailored to companies in the life sciences industry. The product offers instant online underwriting that accounts for both grant and venture funding without requiring personal guarantees from founders and entrepreneurs, Brex said in a blog post on its website.

Henrique Dubugras, co-founder and CEO of Brex, said firms in the life sciences industry typically have high funding levels but “untraditional” and delayed revenue models, requiring a card that offers more spending flexibility.

Founded in 2017, Brex has raised $315 million in equity and currently boasts a valuation $2.6 billion. The company originally targeted startups, then extended offerings to larger tech companies and added a card for e-commerce firms in February.

At the time, Dubugras told Bank Innovation that the young tech companies and budding e-commerce firms that his company targets are meant to stay with Brex as they grow. “A big part of our value proposition is that you can start with Brex and you can scale with Brex,” he added.

The life sciences industry is a significantly smaller segment than e-commerce, Dubugras acknowledged at a fintech conference in New York City last week. “We think that it definitely will not be as relevant as e-commerce, but, if in six months it’s between 10% and 15% of the business, we’ll probably be happy,” he said.

Gilles Ubaghs, a senior analyst with Aite Group, said Brex has “carved out for itself a pretty good little niche” with the new offering, which plays into its overall strategy of targeting specific segments. He said a lot of younger life sciences firms will likely be “very high growth” and that it will serve Brex well to provide the early cash flow and liquidity to grow alongside those firms.

“Commercial cards, in general, are growing like crazy,” Ubaghs said. “It’s going gangbusters in every sector at the moment. They’re being used more and more for a whole range of purchases. It’s moving away from that traditional perception of an Amex card being used for a six-martini lunch.”

Ubaghs said what Brex is doing differently from the traditional card companies is largely in how it underwrites its clients. He said it’s also worth noting that the Brex card behaves more like a charge card or deferred debit card rather than a credit card.

“They would probably tell you the technology of the card is cool because of X,Y and Z, and I’m sure it’s there, but the big difference is really more about how the card is financed and how that approval is done,” Ubaghs said. “That’s because they take on board some of the specifics of various industries.”

For example, when it comes to startups, Brex doesn’t just look at the cash flow history or personal reliability of the founders but takes into consideration VC funding and cash burn rates. “It’s kind of a much more up-to-speed look at what’s happening within that space,” Ubaghs said.

According to Brex’s website, the company already counts life sciences firms like Anthos Therapeutics, Synthego and QurAlis, which focus on cures for cardiovascular disease, genome engineering and transforming bone marrow transplants, among its clients.