Europe: TechBio Investors (1st part)
Europe: TechBio Investors (1st part)
MetaphysicalCells: A newsletter about Science, Technology and AI Drug Discovery
"Hierarchical organization in biological systems thus is characterized by an exquisite array of delicately and intricately interlocked order, steadily increasing in level and complexity and thereby giving rise neogenetically to emergent properties."
Table of Contents
Apex Ventures (Austria)
Amadeus Capital Partners (UK)
Sofinnova Partners (France)
IQ Capital Partners LLP (UK)
Nina Capital (Spain)
SeedCamp (UK)
HCVC (EU/US)
Square One (Germany)
Elaia (France)
✴️ Apex Ventures
Apex Ventures is a deep-tech and medical focused venture capital firm in Vienna, Austria with a primary focus at seed and early stages, typically investing around €500k to €1,5M per company. They invest in Europe and the US, with their main focus being the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) and the Nordics (Northern Europe and the North Atlantic). Apart Celeris Therapeutics (utilizing the Xanthos platform to design PICs™ or Proximity-inducing compounds, with a collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim) and CardiaTec Bioscience (leveraging AI to make sense of large-scale multiomic cardiovascular data, as opposed to conventional singular omic analysis) they invest into:
💈 ImageBiopsy Lab (Austria) is an AI platform that enables physicians and healthcare providers to turn large amounts of unstructured data into diagnostic evidence. Last year, they received FDA approval for their fully automated radiological image processing software, IB Lab LAMA, for quantifying limb-length discrepancy and quantitative knee alignment parameters on uni- and bilateral AP full leg radiographs. ImageBiopsy Lab has raised a total of $4.3M.
💈 Quibim (spun out of La Fe Health Research Institute, part of La Fe Polytechnics and University Hospital in Valencia, Spain) has a cloud-based, tissue-agnostic platform in order to extract key radiomics drivers from the world’s largest imaging data registries (AI-guided precision medicine). On Mar 24 2024, Quibim announced the launch of a new product, QP-Liver, which improves the diagnosis of diffuse liver diseases through highly accurate quantification of tissue fat and iron from MRI scans (CE and UKCA mark for the EU and UK respectively). Quibim has raised a total of €17M.
💈 Zetta Genomics (UK) offers the XetaBase, a genomic-native tertiary analysis tool, built on the open source Open CB platform, the world’s leading genomic data management solution. XetaBase brings simplicity to increasing complexity with a genomic data management solution developed for researchers and clinicians, across the genomic, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. On February 08, 2024, Zetta Genomics secured additional £1.8M in seed funding for genomic data analysis platform (for a total of £6.2M).
On February 22, 2023, Amadeus Capital Partners and APEX Ventures teamed up to back early stage deep tech startups.
✴️ Amadeus Capital Partners
Amadeus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies. Founded in 1997 it is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and is approved as an Enterprise Capital Fund. Since 1997, the firm has raised over $1bn for investment and used it to back more than 180 companies (Veteran investor Anne Glover from Amadeus Capital on Europe's chance to shine in deep tech). So far they have invested in companies like
💈 Antidote (US, UK) is utilizing ML to seamlessly connect patients with clinical trials, creating a simple process for both drug sponsors and the patients they need to reach. Antidote.me has raised a total of $52.1M in funding over 6 rounds.
💈 Healx (UK) is utilizing advanced data analytics, including ML and modern computational biology techniques, like Lig3DLens a 3D virtual screening tool box, to identify novel drug applications in the area of rare disorders. In 2023, FDA granted HLX-1502 Orphan Drug Designation for the treatment of Neurofibromatosis Type 1. Healx has raised over $100M to date and added a dozen projects to its therapeutic portfolio.
💈 Synthace (UK) is offering Antha, a cloud-based software platform for automating and improving the success rate of biological processes, with a large language model ChatGPT integrated as of May 2023. Synthace has raised a total of $81M.
💈 PhoreMost (UK) with a next-generation phenotypic screening platform called SITESEEKER is doing massively high-throughput screening of PROTEINi® libraries to perturb disease biology. PROTEINi are genetically-encoded micro-proteins, computationally programmed to optimize bio-activity and maximize the diversity in proprietary libraries. PhoreMost has raised $70.1M.
💈 Oxford Nanopore Technologies PLC (LON: ONT) is a sequencing company spun out of the University of Oxford. On May 22, 2024, Oxford Nanopore announced the launch of a new Pharmacogenomics (PGx) Beta Program to advance personalised medicine, combining Twist Bioscience’s next generation sequencing (NGS) target enrichment technology with Oxford Nanopore’s sequencing platform.
💈 Nuclera (UK) is offering Nuclera’s eProtein Discovery™ system for rapid access to high-quality, soluble, active proteins at the benchtop, allowing scientists to automate construct screening, inform off-platform protein scale-up and deliver reliable protein in-hand (µg-mg amounts) in less than 48 hours (11 installs successfully completed at leading academic institutes). In 2023, Nuclera entered into AI/ML protein design through a partnership with Google Cloud. Nuclera has raised a total of $83.3M.
✴️ Sofinnova Partners
Sofinnova Partners (Paris, France, 1972) is an independent venture capital firm based in Paris, France that has backed more than 500 companies over 50 years, creating market leaders around the globe. With over €2.5 billion of funds under management, Sofinnova Partners experienced team, and hands-on approach in building portfolio companies through to exit, have created market leaders from landmark historical investments including Genentech, Actelion and Vistaprint to more recent successes such as CoreValve, Novexel and Fovea. In 2023, Sofinnova Partners Launched Europe’s Largest Early-Stage Digital Medicine Fund. Managed by Antoine Papiernik, Henrijette Richter and Graziano Seghezzi the firm announced in December, 2023 the Sofinnova.AI a cutting-edge AI platform set to transform its life sciences investment practice.
Based in Paris, London and Milan, Sofinnova Partners invests in companies from seed to late-stage ➡️
💈 Betteromics (US) is a digital medicine pioneer that enables scientists, researchers and clinicians to understand and gain insights from massive amounts of data using advanced computation and AI techniques. Betteromics has raised $25M. BioCorteX (UK) is modeling the complex interactions between patients, their microbiome and their treatments, using the company’s flagship product, Carbon Mirror™, a technology incorporating principles of physics and chemistry to create in-silico simulations with high fidelity. BioCorteX has raised $5M. Deepc (Germany) is providing radiology teams with seamless access to an array of the best regulator-approved AI diagnostic tools. In 2024, Deepc acquired Osimis radiology imaging software and expanded its US Presence through a new strategic partnership with ImagineSoftware, the foremost centralized medical billing and revenue cycle management technology provider in the United States. Deepc has raised a total funding of $12.9M. Kiro (France) is a digital medicine company developing a platform that uses AI to make lab test results more relevant to doctors and more understandable to patients. Kiro has raised €13.8M. Cure51 (France) is building the first global database of cancer survivors to discover the biological features that made them "outliers." On March 20, 2024, Paris-based Cure51 raised €15 million to develop first-in-class treatments from exceptional cancer survivors.
💈 Bioptimus (the youngest child of Owkin in France) is a startup developing a large-language model (LLM), in order to build the first universal AI foundation model for biology to fuel breakthrough discoveries and accelerate innovations in biomedicine and beyond. The French startup was just launched with a seed funding of $35M, led by Sofinnova Partners, with Bpifrance Large Venture, and additional funding from top global technology VCs.
✴️ IQ Capital Partners LLP
IQ Capital Partners LLP (Cambridge UK, 2006) is a team of serious and approachable partners—Kerry Baldwin, Max Bautin, Simon Hirtzel and Ed Stacey—with deep tech knowledge, who have been working together for over 20 years helping tech companies rapidly scale. IQ Capital has achieved numerous exits, recently to Google, Apple, Becton Dickinson and Huawei and several high profile IPOs, including Autonomy. On June 29, 2023, IQ Capital announced the final close of its fourth Venture Fund at $200M, taking its assets under management in deep tech to over $1bn.
Invests into ➡️
💈 Closed Loop Medicine (UK) is a digital therapeutics creating personalized and integrated treatment pathways enabled by new closed loop models of care. On May 16 2024, Closed Loop Medicine and Pharmanovia (a global pharmaceutical company that commercializes novel medicines and revitalizes, extends and expands the lifecycle of established medicines) announced the initiation of their OptiZest study, (ID: NCT06372470) and first patient recruitment. Dreamfold (Canada) is developing generative ML algorithms to navigate the vast space of proteins to discover medicines. Pictura Bio, a spin out from the University of Oxford, combines the power of single-molecule fluorescent microscopy with ML to identify pathogens in under a minute. Optellum (UK) is applying ML to the world’s largest clinical dataset of CT scans. NanoSyrinx (UK) is developing a synthetic biology platform, Nanosyringes, for targeted delivery of proteins and peptides directly into the interior of cells. Pangaea Data is a London and South San Francisco provider of a software product platform (unsupervised AI) to help healthcare and pharmaceutical providers to find untreated patients and bring them into screening (from both structured and unstructured textual data). The founders at Pangaea have secured more than $300M in research funding through their work, which includes a $110M grant to apply for LLMs in Medicine. Base Immune (UK) is modeling pathogen evolution and immune response to generate vaccines against emerging and complex pathogens that have been failed by traditional approaches. Their discovery platform combines scientific expertise with a proprietary AI-platform to generate mutation-resistant vaccines. On 26th February, 2024, Baseimmune announced the closing of £9M in Series A funding led by new investors MSD Global Health Innovation Fund and IQ Capital, with participation from existing investors including Hoxton Ventures, Creator Fund, Beast Ventures and Maki.vc.
✴️ Nina Capital
Nina Capital is a specialized VC firm in Spain that invests in healthcare transformation powered by information technology and it focuses on pre-seed to seed+ rounds (from €200k to €1500k) across Europe and beyond (United States, Israel, Canada, Australia). They invest into:
💈 Promptly Health (Portugal) is an emerging global provider of end-to-end Real-World Evidence solutions. Promptly helps you generate new knowledge from harmonized high-quality clinical, socio-economic and claims data, augmented with the collection of longitudinal patient-reported data and patient-generated digital biomarkers. On April 12, 2024, Promptly Health and Datavant, the leader in securely connecting health data, announced a collaboration to address the challenges of a fragmented health data landscape in Europe. Promptly has raised a total of €3.8M.
💈 Segmed (US) is an AI-automated medical record retrieval and analysis platform that auto-categorizes and transforms records into high-yield data with something like 100 million imaging studies to its data network! Segmed has raised a total of $10M. On Apr 19, 2024, Segmed partnered with Beacon Health System in Indiana. Beacon will have access to Segmed's database of imaging data from various modalities such as CT scans, MRIs, x-rays and ultrasounds. Segmed has raised a total funding of $10M over 3 rounds.
💈 CryoCloud (Netherlands) has web-app that provides instant access to cloud resources, image analysis workflows and storage solutions for cryo-EM data analysis. Cryo-EM is a Nobel Prize winning method that is revolutionizing biology by providing insights into the 3D architecture of proteins and CryoCloud eliminates queues, downtimes, the need for setup costs and hardware maintenance, while providing optimized and accelerated computation via an intuitive UI. On March 8, 2024, CryoCloud secured €500K funding.
✴️ SeedCamp
Seedcamp is a European seed-stage venture capital fund, headquartered in London, launched in May 2007 by a group of 30 European investors. The fund's Managing Partners are Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Espinal. They invest smart capital into pre-seed and seed stage startups (providing up to €5M). The Seedcamp Nation includes 500 startups building breakout businesses that change the way people live, interact and work and includes publicly listed UiPath, Wise, and unicorns Revolut, Synthesia, Sorare, Pleo, wefox, Grover and viz.ai. Regarding TechBio they invest into:
💈 Verisian (UK) uses traceability-enabled AI to reimagine clinical programming and guarantee a high level of integrity in submissions. Lindus Health (“an anti-CRO” in UK) created a new model for running end to end clinical studies, including everything that a traditional clinical research organization does—protocol writing, trial design, patient recruitment, and clinical operations delivery—introducing the "All-in-One Consumer Health CRO", designed with health and wellness sponsors in mind. Their unique software platform has access to 30 million Electronic Health Records. Sano Genetics (UK) combines genetic testing, recruitment and long-term engagement in one platform leveraging AI and accelerating enrollment as well as simplifying operations for precision medicine teams. On January 22, 2024, Sano Genetics announced a $11.4M raise led by Plural.
✴️ HCVC
HCVC is an early-stage Venture Capital (Pre-seed to Series A) and is the first community-based venture capital firm for hardtech startups. It has offices in Paris and in San Francisco. They run a fund that invests in early-stage full-stack companies building hard technologies and they gather the best hardware companies worldwide in an exclusive community. On October 3, 2023, HCVC was back with a new $75M deep tech fund. They invest into:
💈 Automata (US) is combining cloud-based workflow scheduling software with a robotically enabled lab bench. Automata LINQ is the leading automation platform that digitally and robotically connects every component of your lab without compromise, to create fully automated end-to-end workflows. Automata has raised a total funding of $107M over 7 rounds. Orakl Oncology (France) partners with the oncology industry to meet the challenge of personalized medicine. They match their tumor models with detailed clinical and omics data and this provides the necessary context to interpret biological results. Then they gather unique insights by mining multi-modal experimental data and combining it with deep patient data (AI powered analysis). On October 4, 2023, Orakl Oncology, raised €3M to develop its techbio platform and the investment round was led by Speedinvest with additional investment from HCVC and Verve Ventures.
✴️ Square One
SquareOne is a venture capital firm focused on pre-seed and seed investments in B2B technology. The Berlin-based VC, formerly known as Paua Ventures, was founded in 2010 and has a network of leading executives, tech entrepreneurs and investors, in order to build the foundation for large and profitable category leaders in B2B software and deep tech businesses across Europe. So far, counts companies like Stripe, Pipedrive, Carbon One and Wandelbots as part of its portfolio. They invest into:
💈 Synteny (UK) is building an AI platform to power disease discoveries from immune data. Noscendo (Germany) is offering the DISQVER® platform for digital pathogen diagnostics via cell-free DNA sequencing, detecting 16,000 microbes & 1,500 pathogens from a single patient sample in approx. 24 hours.
✴️ Elaia
Elaia is French venture capital firm focused on European digital and deep tech startups, from early stage to growth developpement, with offices in Paris, Barcelona and Tel Aviv. On April 18, 2024, Elaia and Lazard, a global leader in active asset management signed a strategic partnership agreement to create a leading European player focused on investment in technology companies, supporting them at all stages of their development, from seed to their listing on public markets.
They invest into:
💈 Aqemia is an in silico drug discovery start-up using quantum physics and AI to transform the drug discovery process. The company started in France in 2019, as a deeptech spin-off from École normale supérieure and has built an innovation engine it calls the Aqemia’s Launchpad. In 2022, Aqemia raised €30M in a Series A funding round led by Eurazeo (a French private equity firm and investment group with a diversified portfolio of €35 billion in assets under management), Bpifrance (for more in the 2nd part of this newsletter) through its Large Venture fund, with the participation of Elaia its historic investor. Moreover, in 2023 Aqemia announced a multi-year research collaboration with the global pharmaceutical company Sanofi. And in January 2024, Aqemia raised an additional €30M Series A funding, thanks to their partners Wendel (one of Europe's leading listed investment firms, operating at the crossroads of industry and finance), Bpifrance Large Venture, Eurazeo and Elaia.
💈 SeqOne (France) is a genetic analysis platform combining AI and big data approaches (NGS data) to make genetic analysis more accessible to doctors treating cancer and hereditary diseases. On March 11, 2024, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, delivering a new generation of nanopore-based molecular sensing technology, and SeqOne announced a new partnership enabling end-to-end analytical workflows from sample to report, focusing on rare diseases in the short-term and oncology in the longer-term.
💈 hema.to is a German health tech bringing AI automation to the clinical analysis of blood data, by using its cloud-based ML platform to personalize the analysis (cytometry, clinical analysis of blood data) and bring ‘precision diagnostics to immune medicine’. On June 26, 2023, hema.to raised a €3.6M seed round.
For more: