I: TechBio Weekly News
Latest Trends: Apheris and Germany’s TechBio/AI Drug Discovery Landscape
✴️ I: TechBio Weekly News
Latest Trends: 💈 Apheris and 💈 Germany’s TechBio/AI Drug Discovery Landscape
✴️ II: TechBio Weekly News
✴️ III: TechBio Weekly News
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
By Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
✴️ I: TechBio Weekly News
💈 Apheris AI GmbH
Berlin-based Apheris has just (January 3, 2025) completed its Series A funding round, raising its total funding to $20.8M (approximately €20.24M) (German federated computing company Apheris secures €20.2M). The round was led by European DeepTech venture capital firms OTB Ventures and eCAPITAL, with participation from existing investors such as Octopus Ventures and Heal Capital.
Apheris enables governed, private and secure access to data for ML and analytics. Usually, all data that's needed for analytics and ML isn't always where you want it to be, since it can often be behind a boundary: geographical, regulatory, organizational or can be just too sensitive or costly to move. Solutions to this problem such as synthetic data, encryption or data clean rooms can limit the validity of the result, risk data breaches or simply don't scale. To solve this problem, Apheris offers the Apheris Compute Gateway, which ensures only approved computations can be launched on that data. It also enables federation across organizational boundaries, allowing ML-powered insights with no need to centralize data, while ensuring compliance with data privacy, security and governance obligations. Basically, they send the computation to the data rather than the other way round.
Founded in 2019, Apheris is backed by top investors and tech industry innovators, including Octopus Ventures, Heal Capital, LocalGlobe, another.vc, MuleSoft founder Ross Mason (Dig Ventures) and Twitter board chairman and former CFO of Google, Patrick Pichette (Ex-Google CFO Patrick Pichette backed deep tech startup Apheris in a $3 million seed round).
💈 Germany and TechBio/AI Drug Discovery
✴️ Atai Life Science N.V. (NASDAQ:ATAI) (2018, Munich Germany) is a global biotech company-builder that leverages a decentralized and data-driven platform model to serve millions of people suffering from mental health disorders. The company is acquiring and efficiently developing innovative treatments (psychedelics) that address significant unmet medical needs in the mental health space and describes itself as a “global biotech company builder” with offices in Berlin, New York and Amsterdam.
On November 13, 2024, Atai announced the third quarter 2024 financial results and provided corporate updates:
Phase 2 study for VLS-01 (proprietary oral transmucosal film formulation of DMT) is expected to initiate the study in the U.S. around year-end 2024.
Atai expects to initiate an exploratory, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 study to assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy of EMP-01 (oral formulation of R-MDMA) in adults with SAD around year-end 2024.
IBX-210 is a novel IV formulation of ibogaine, which is an indole alkaloid with potential for clinical benefit for substance use disorder (non-clinical studies).
Discovery program to identify novel, non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2AR agonists for TRD using AI/ML-informed drug design and medicinal chemistry.
RL-007 is an orally bioavailable compound that has demonstrated pro-cognitive effects in multiple pre-clinical and clinical studies, including two Phase 1 and two Phase 2 trials.
Completed the acquisition of IntelGenx Corp., a drug delivery company focused on the development and manufacturing of novel oral thin film products for the pharmaceutical market and manufactures of VLS-01 (buccal film DMT).
On Januray 04, 2024, Atai announced a strategic investment in Beckley Psytech Limited, a private clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to transforming short-duration psychedelics into effective and rapid-acting medicines for neuropsychiatric conditions. This strategic investment and collaboration aims to accelerate the development of Beckley Psytech’s two clinical-stage, patent-protected, short-duration psychedelic candidates, BPL-003 and ELE-101, by adding them to Atai’s mental health innovation platform.
Moreover, Atai is known for having a strategic investment with:
Compass Pathways (NASDAQ: CMPS) (2016, Altrincham, Cheshire UK), considered a Top HealthTech Company in Europe, is developing psychedelic therapies like the COMP360 treatment that is a psilocybin drug administered alongside guided talk therapy, and so far early studies showed that the combination is highly effective at treating people with treatment resistant depression (TRD). Top-line COMP005 data for COMP360 phase 3 pivotal program in treatment-resistant depression are now expected in the second quarter 2025 (October 31, 2024). Finally, a strategic reorganization to focus all efforts on the COMP360 program resulted in a reduction of workforce of approximately 30%.
and is known also for having different joint ventures with:
EntheogeniX Biosciences (2019, US) is a joint venture between Atai and Cyclica dedicated to developing the next generation of psychedelics-inspired mental health drugs. By leveraging Cyclica’s unique AI-enabled computational biophysics platform to generate de novo chemical entities (from psychoactive seed small molecule compounds) they develop treatments for mental health indications ranging from depression to schizophrenia. Cyclica’s patented Ligand Design™ and Ligand Express™ platforms allow researchers to visualize the complete polypharmacological profile of a compound, helping predict its effects on the human proteome and thus avoid unforeseen side effects (typically discovered in late stage clinical trials) during the design phase. Entheogenix has described 5-HT2A receptor agonists reported to be useful for the treatment of post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety disorders.
Perception Neuroscience, a biopharmaceutical company committed to develop therapies for neuropsychiatric diseases (Atai Life delivers results from PCN-101 study). Recognify Life Sciences, with a phase 2a study in cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia, for its lead compound RL-007 (a GABA / nicotinic modulator). GABA Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on developing its lead compound GRX-917 for anxiety, depression and a broad range of neurological disorders (atai Life Sciences Company GABA Therapeutics Announces Positive Final Results from Phase 1 Single and Multiple Ascending Dose Trial of GRX-917). Viridia, the ATAI unit exploring ayahuasca-based treatments for mental illness. EmpathBio, focused on developing MDMA derivatives with different pharmacological profiles than MDMA. And Kures, which targets the important intersection between pain and opioid use disorder.
Finally, on November 19, 2024 H.C. Wainwright adjusted its outlook on shares of Atai, reducing the price target to $10.00 from the previous $15.00 while maintaining a Buy rating on the stock (Atai Life Sciences stock target cut, retains buy rating on developments).
✴️ Deepc AI GmbH (Germany) is providing radiology teams with seamless access to an array of the best regulator-approved AI diagnostic tools (deepcOS). 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. On July 25, 2024, the Munich-based deepc got €12 million to spread radiology AI around the world.
✴️ Noscendo GmbH (Germany) is offering the DISQVER® platform for digital pathogen diagnostics (harnessing the power of Next-Generation Sequencing and bioinformatics) via cell-free DNA sequencing, detecting 16,000 microbes and 1,500 pathogens from a single patient sample in approximately 24 hours.
✴️ hema.to (hema.to GmbH) 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 is also bringing precision diagnostics to immune medicine (Detecting small malignant B-cell populations in the blood and bone marrow using machine learning). On June 26, 2023, hema.to raised a €3.6M seed round led by Elaia Partners.
✴️ Holtzbrinck Digital (Holtzbrinck Digital Strategy GmbH) (Munich Germany, 2010) is the internet-investment arm of the publishing group Georg von Holtzbrinck and one of the leading internet investors in Germany. Holtzbrinck Digital is not looking for a quick exit, but rather to achieve sustainable joint success in the market. On April 17, 2024, Battery Ventures, a global, technology-focused investment firm, announced the acquisition of Labguru (BioData Inc.), the life-science laboratory-data platform, from Holtzbrinck Digital (and terms were not disclosed). LagGuru (US) provides a comprehensive laboratory data-management hub for planning and tracking, documenting experiments, streamlining lab logistics and sharing results across teams and organizations. Labguru’s easy-to-use, cloud-based, research-to-production life-science platform combines an Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN), a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and a set of informatics tools to enable and enhance research and production. Holtzbrinck Digital invests into ➡️ Strateos, TetraScience (Scientific Data Cloud), Dimensions (Data and solutions for discovery and analytics), FigShare (An online open access repository where researchers can preserve and share their research outputs), Frontiers, Overleaf, ReadCube and many more.
✴️ LabTwin (LabTwin GmbH) (Berlin Germany, 2018) is the world’s first voice and AI-powered digital lab assistant, working alongside scientists at the point of experimentation. They utilize AI to understand voice-based commands and transcribe voice-based notes, allowing researchers to take notes and organize lab documentation faster and with less effort. In October 2019 it was announced a new partnership between LabTwin and ABI-LAB, a life science incubator and accelerator that supports biotech, medtech and medical data startups. On June 2020, LabTwin was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Life Sciences. Gartner, is the world’s leading research and advisory company that recognizes interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. On September 17, 2024, labforward GmbH, a leading provider of solutions for digital transformation in the laboratory with a platform for the digital integration of laboratory equipment and the connectivity of entire workflows consisting of an electronic laboratory journal (ELN, Electronic Lab Notebook) and a laboratory execution system (LES) - and LabTwin announced their merger (labforward merges with LabTwin). For that reason, Sartorius, as the founder and previous owner of LabTwin, has brought its business into labforward GmbH. Sartorius will thus become a shareholder in labforward GmbH, whose future headquarters will be the previous location of LabTwin in Berlin.
✴️ Molecular Health GmbH (Heidelberg Germany, 2004) utilizes AI to analyze molecular and clinical data of individual patients allowing researchers to improve prediction of drug response and resistance, to design more successful trials and to use molecular evidence for market acceptance. They offer the cloud-based Dataome platform that analyzes the molecular and clinical data of individual patients against the world’s medical, biological and pharmacological knowledge, to drive more precise diagnostic, therapeutic and drug safety decisions. Dataome was designed to intelligently process the growing medical and molecular biological knowledge to enable medical progress. It structures and integrates clinical and molecular data using AI and ML. Then, medical and data science experts review and curate the processed information.
On October 13, 2023, Takara Bio Inc (Japan) entered into a licensing arrangement with Molecular Health GmbH, to support genomic medicine by combining Molecular Health’s software with Takara Bio’s genome analysis service. Takara Bio provides kits, reagents, instruments and services that help researchers explore questions about gene discovery, regulation and function, under the Takara®, Cellartis® and Clontech® brands.
On May 15, 2024, the genomics solutions provider Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) and Molecular Health have entered into a global multi-year agreement (Integrated DNA Technologies and Molecular Health Ink Commercial Partnership), to integrate their next generation sequencing (NGS) capabilities. The partnership pairs IDT’s Archer NGS research assay platform with Molecular Health’s variant annotation and reporting software to equip molecular researchers with tertiary analysis for their NGS data, maximizing lab efficiency and streamlining genomics data workflows to accelerate cancer discoveries. The collaboration also extends access to research customers in the genomic profiling space through IDT’s nationwide footprint.
✴️ BlueYard (BY Capital Management GmbH) is a venture capital investment firm based in Berlin, Germany founded in 2016 (by Berlin-based Dubliner Ciaran O’Leary, son of former IDA boss Barry O’Leary) that invests in founders (seed-stage, early-stage, and later-stage companies) with transforming ideas that decentralize markets and empower humanity. They invest into:
Chemify Ltd, spun out of 15 years of research at the University of Glasgow UK (CEO Professor Lee Cronin), aims to digitize chemistry and produce solutions to run chemical code for drug discovery, chemical synthesis and materials discovery. They have an extendable chemical execution architecture for chemical synthesis that can automatically read the literature, leading to a universal autonomous workflow. The robotic synthesis code can be corrected in natural language without any programming knowledge, and is hardware independent. This chemical code can then be combined with a graph describing the hardware modules and compiled into platform-specific, low-level robotic instructions for execution (A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature). On January 18, 2024, Chemify and Prepaire™ Labs announced to expand their partnership with an additional program to tackle the ongoing Opioid crisis, by directly combining Chemify’s breakthrough programmable chemistry platform with Prepaire’s integrated novel open collaboration drug discovery platform. After announcing in 2023 a $43M funding and a collaboration with Dewpoint Therapeutics (cancer, neurodegeneration), on October 1, 2024, Chemify was awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to discover new drug leads for treating tuberculosis and malaria.
Sensible Biotechnologies Inc (Slovakia, UK) is engineering cells to unlock the next generation of mRNA medicines. On April 10, 2023, Sensible and Ginkgo inked a deal to develop an mRNA platform.
Bit bio Ltd (UK) is using a cell identity coding platform (opti-ox or optimized inducible overexpression platform) that has the ability to create any human cell type and to manufacture it at scale with precision and consistency (bit.bio defends European patent for ‘novel’ opti-ox technology). In 2023, BlueRock Therapeutics LP, a clinical stage cell therapy company and wholly owned independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, and Bit Bio announced a collaboration and option agreement for the discovery and manufacture of iPSC-derived regulatory T cells (Tregs) for use in creating therapeutics. In April 2024, Bit bio partnered with Bi/ond to study Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and in March collaborated with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance research and drug discovery for Parkinson’s disease. Just two weeks ago (December 18 2024), bit.bio raised $30M led by M&G Investments.
✴️ Biotx.ai (Biotx.ai, GmbH) (2017, Berlin Germany) delivers predictive biomarkers as a basis for decision support in precision medicine. They use novel, state of the art, ML approaches specifically designed to find complex patterns in biomedical data. Traditionally, big data analysis has involved millions of subjects and few features that are easy to train AI with. But, with very small patient cohorts and sample sizes (amount of information gathered through clinical trials and genetic testing), with few subjects (few patients) and millions of features (an incredibly large number of data points, like the entire genome) is hard to train AI with. This is something Biotx.ai calls “wide data”, that is incredibly hard to analyze consequently most pharmas avoid this approach entirely, opting instead to sequence entire populations. For this reason, biotx.ai has designed its AI algorithms to make wide data manageable by separating meaningful findings from the noise and leading to the discovery of previously undetectable complex genetic patterns (What is Wide Data?).
They offer Causal inference modeling at scale that requires the researcher to construct a model to explain the relationships among concepts related to a specific phenomenon, and is a proven method to ensure success in clinical trials. They enable drug discovery, drug repurposing and validation via large-scale screening:
Discovering all diseases that can be treated by a given drug,
Discovering all drugs that can be used to treat any given disease and
Exploring all disease mechanisms and pathways.
By utilizing Biotx.ai
Immungenetics (Immungenetics AG), a German biotech focused on Alzheimerʼs disease, was able to find causal biomarkers crucial for their study design and used multiple causal models from biotx.aiʼs to better understand the mechanism of action of their drug thiethylperazine via the ABCC1 transporter.
Alfa Intes (Alfa Intes Industria Terapeutica Splendore s.r.l.), a family-owned Italian pharma, discovered new indications for its drug Indomethacin. And
Eternygen GmbH, a German biotech, found that one of the potential indications for their compound will not work and has shifted focus onto another indication instead by signing a next deal.
On October 26, 2023, Simbec-Orion (SIMBEC-ORION GROUP LIMITED), a full-service mid-size CRO, and Biotx.ai announced their strategic partnership to bring AI-powered insights and predictive models to support data-driven clinical trial design. Finally, on August 21, 2023 Iceland-based 3Z (3Z Pharmaceuticals Reykjavik Iceland) announced a strategic partnership with Biotx.ai to improve the transition from animal studies to human clinical trials. The study will utilize AI-powered human genetics-based modeling and explore the involvement of 3Z’s lead therapeutic targets in ADHD.
✴️ Aignostics (Aignostics GmbH), is a spin-off from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health, pioneering computational pathology for pharmaceutical research and diagnostics with its proprietary "Explainable AI", a platform to overcome the typical "black-box" problem of AI in pathology. Aignostics is focused on developing bespoke AI models for clinical trials and CDx development. Their foundation model, RudolfV, was trained on the highest number of slides in the comparison, while still covering H&E, IHC and other stains, across almost 60 tissue types and 15+ labs in Europe and the US. All of their AI models run in their own proprietary platform (Aignostics Portal), but can also be deployed into third party platforms and in-house platforms of clients. The platform is available as a SaaS solution and supports a wide range of scanners and image modalities, including H&E, IHC and multiplex IF.
On March 14, 2024, Bayer and Aignostics GmbH announced a strategic collaboration on several AI-powered approaches with applications in precision oncology drug research and development (Bayer, AI-Focused Aignostics Partner to Find New Oncology Targets).
On October 29, 2024, AIgnostics raised US$34m in Series B financing. The oversubscribed funding round was led by ATHOS, with investments from Mayo Clinic and growth financing from HTGF, alongside support from existing investors Wellington Partners, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, CARMA Fund, and VC Fonds Technologie managed by IBB Ventures. In total, Aignostics has now raised over $55M, reflecting investors' confidence in its differentiated AI models and clear commercial strategy.
✴️ Molecule AG (Also Known As: Molecule Protocol) (Germany) is a software platform to accelerate innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. It connects scientists, patients and industry to advance drug development in a collaborative open market. Basically, it is a decentralized biotech protocol with intellectual property into web3 and launching biotech DAOs. Their Molecule IPT Dashboard is now live 🚨 and you can easily view live IP token data, join project communities and follow onchain activity all in one place. During 2014:
Molecule is building the first Solana-native DeSci funding platform: Pump.Science,
Molecule Partnered with CryoDAO to Expand Onchain Intellectual Property and Advance Cryopreservation Research,
Molecule Launched Catalyst, a New Platform for Funding Science Using Tokens,
they partnered with Nucleate to educate and train venture fellows in sourcing DeSci projects (Molecule Announces Nucleate Partnership and $100K DeSci Award),
for more Molecule's 2024 Recap.
✴️ In 2022, BioMed X, an independent research organization at the University of Heidelberg, Germany combining the best of academia and industry, announced it has signed a research collaboration with Sanofi in order to develop an AI platform to predict the efficacy of drug candidates using virtual patient populations (Sanofi, BioMed X Enter AI-Based Drug Development Collaboration). In 2023, BioMed X and Sanofi begin joint research on AI-driven drug development. But who is BioMed X? BioMed X is an independent research institute with sites in Heidelberg, Germany, New Haven, Connecticut, XSeed Labs in Ridgefield, Connecticut and a worldwide network of partner locations. They operate at the interface between academia and industry, performing biomedical research and drug discovery & development in the fields of oncology, immunology, neuroscience, platform technologies, and AI. During 2024
BioMed X Institute and Boehringer Ingelheim Successfully Completed Schizophrenia Research Project,
New Immuno-Oncology Research Project in Partnership With Merck Starts at the BioMed X Institute in Heidelberg,
AION Labs, In Continued Partnership with BioMed X, Launches First 2024 Global Call for Applications: AI/ML Platform for Targeting RNA with Small Molecules,
New Immuno-Oncology Research Team in Partnership with Ono Pharmaceutical Started at BioMed X Institute and
BioMed X Started Collaboration in Autoimmunity Research with Servier.
✴️ ilastik is an open source toolkit for interactive ML, a point-and-click interface to help detect not just cells and nuclei but also features such as microtubules and vesicles. It was co-developed by Anna Kreshuk, a computer scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, working on how to improve the software’s ability to train neural networks for tasks such as classification and segmentation (ilastik: interactive machine learning for (bio)image analysis).
✴️ Genome Biologics (2016, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is developing RNA interference therapies for cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases, by utilizing an AI platform to assist in identifying suitable drug targets and also to allow 2D and 3D investigation of RNAi disease targets in a variety of animal models. One of the startup’s products is GENIMPAS, a cloud-based in-silico accelerated drug repositioning and development platform that uses pattern recognition and ML to match compound databases (transcriptomics, GWAS, CVS and protein interaction) and drug discovery pipelines with profiles of disease-relevant genes. GENIMAPS utilizes a customized pattern recognition and real-time ML algorithms to perform matches with ever increasing accuracy and precision, and is directly coupled to the GENISYST for accelerated preclinical drug testing platform. GENISYST is a patented technology for in vitro and in vivo multiplexed disease modeling, applied to modulate a combination of coding genes, microRNAs and non-coding RNAs in specific tissues or cell lineages of the adult, newborn or embryo. GENISYST is also applicable for in vitro 2D and 3D (human tissue organoid) cell culture based drug screens. GENISYST is applicable in small (mice, rats) and large animals (pig, sheep, NHP) preclinical studies. When coupled to GENIMAPS, GENISYST can potentially bring a repurposed/orphan drug into Phase II or III Clinical studies in 6-18 months. Genome Biologics is a resident company of Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JLABS that develops solutions for preclinical drug discovery.
✴️ Innoplexus (Innoplexus AG, Innoplexus Consulting Services Pvt Ltd, Innoplexus Holdings Inc; Legal Name Innoplexus AG) (2011) in Frankfurt Germany is a consulting-led technology and product development company focusing on big data and analytics, using AI to generate insights from billions of disparate data points from thousands of data sources. In this way they are allowing researchers to improve decision-making by seeing information in context from biomedical data sources including publications, clinical trials, congresses and theses. Innoplexus holding company Partex NV has a strategic partnership with Anavex Life Sciences, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. Moreover, Partex just announced a strategic collaboration with Shanghai Ark Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd, a leading Chinese biopharmaceutical company, to out-license ArkBio’s proprietary autotaxin inhibitor, AK-0707. Under this partnership, Partex will leverage its cutting-edge AI technology to identify new indications and potential partners for AK0707, furthering its therapeutic potential beyond the current development in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
✴️ Vorwerk Ventures (Vorwerk Ventures III GmbH & Co. KG) is a venture capital firm with a focus on health, food and climate. Is an independent €150M Venture Capital Fund with €400M under management headquartered in Berlin Germany, constantly on the look-out for promising opportunities starting with Seed/Series A investments of € 1M to € 10M and ensuring continuous support by reserving up to € 15M for upcoming financing rounds. They invest into:
nilo health, a space for mental health at work.
MedKitDoc, a hardware-enabled remote medical care platform. And
DUDE CHEM, a leading company in green chemical manufacturing based in Berlin. As a virtual deep tech manufacturer, they enable a greener supply of active pharmaceuticals and their intermediates in order to transform the current pharma-chemical industry into an environmentally benign sector. On February 7, 2024, German green chemistry startup DUDE CHEM closed €6.5M Seed round.
✴️ Yendou (Yendou, Inc) is a clinical operations automation platform based in Berlin that since its launch in March 2023 has rapidly gathered attention and adoption from over 1,200 clinicians in 46 countries. Yendou is a pioneering data management and workflow automation platform for Clinical Operations Teams in the Life Sciences. On February 28, 2024, Berlin-based Yendou secured €1.2 million to scale its clinical operations automation platform for the pharma industry.
✴️ Pheiron GmbH in Berlin founded in 2023 is the GPS for drug development. Their platform uses AI and large-scale human genetics (thousands of proprietary disease signatures capturing disease onset and progression in high-resolution) to infer causal insights on targets and populations. Pheiron has entered a strategic collaboration with Ribocure Pharmaceuticals AB and Suzhou Ribo Life Science Co., Ltd to accelerate the discovery and development of RNA-based therapeutics with evidence from large human populations generated through PheironGPS. This partnership will bring advanced human evidence to Ribo’s focus on cardiometabolic diseases, helping to: prioritize therapeutic targets, pinpoint causal disease mechanisms and optimize patient stratification for clinical development,
✴️ HTGF (High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH) in Germany is a venture capital investor for innovative technologies and business models, supporting the best founders whose ideas can revolutionize entire industries and improve people’s lives from seed to exit. They are a public–private partnership that works closely and successfully with companies from a wide range of industries. As a seed investor with 1.4B billion under management, they have financed more than 750 start-ups in the industrial tech, digital tech, life sciences and chemicals sectors, and they have overseen more than 180 exits, including IPOs. They invest into:
Altavo (Altavo GmbH) is a Dresden based medical technology startup founded in February 2021 with a non-invasive radar sensing and AI algorithms for speech recognition and synthesis. Altavo is developing prosthetics to improve the rehabilitation of voiceless people, for example after laryngectomy, with fundamental advantages in terms of voice quality, usability and complication risks. On February 1, 2024, Altavo successfully closed its Series A financing round, where a European consortium led by OCCIDENT invested €5.0M in the development of Altavo’s novel Artificial Voice.
Avelios Medical (Avelios Medical GmbH) offers a modular software platform for the digitization of workflows in hospitals and data-driven patient care. The state-of-the-art software digitizes and optimizes all workflows in hospitals in a user-friendly manner, offering numerous innovative functions such as an automatically generated doctor's letter or intelligent input fields for the documentation of patient treatment. In addition, the software automatically generates fully structured data, enabling the direct use of data-driven use cases and AI algorithms. The company is based in Munich and was founded in 2020 by Nicolas Jakob, Dr. Sebastian Krammer and Christian Albrecht.
✴️ On October 9, 2024, former partners from Speedinvest and Target Partners launched a new fund, Backtrace, to invest in early-stage software developer, security and AI infrastructure startups (Ex-Speedinvest and Target Partners VCs make first close of new fund). The Munich-based fund has raised €10M for its first close out of a planned €30M, which it hopes to complete within the next year. Backtrace VC (Backtrace I/O, Inc) will invest pre-seed cheques of between €750k to €1M and seed cheques of over €1M and they plan to lead or co-lead deals, aiming to invest in 20 to 25 companies.
✴️ Lucid Genomics (Lucid Genomics GmbH) the Berlin-based start-up Lucid Genomics, a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and the Institute of Medical Genetics and Human Genetics at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, raised (September 02, 2024) €1.3M in pre-seed funding, in a funding round led by Caesar Ventures with support from BIF Partners, another.vc and the MPF Accelerator. The funds will be used to further expand their AI-Digital HealthTech Platform, which extracts all genomic information to improve diagnostics and drug discovery. Lucid Genomics mines undiscovered parts of human DNA, through AI-powered solutions.