A leading automation company powering life sciences labs, has raised $40m to accelerate its rapid growth and industry presence across the US, UK and EMEA.
Scientific organizations are increasingly focused on the speed and flexibility of their experimentation and data collection. This is happening at the same time as they struggle to find laboratory real estate as well as finding and retaining skilled lab staff. This convergence is leading to organisations rethinking their tooling, data infrastructure and ability to experiment at scale.
Automata’s LINQ automation platform is designed to make automation easily adoptable by science labs across research institutions, hospital groups and pharmaceutical and biotech companies and CROs, whether they are running high throughput workflows or experimenting with a high rate of workflow changeover requiring dynamic protocol development.
Dimension led the round with participation from A.P. Moller Holding, parent company of the A.P. Moller Group and owners of, amongst other businesses, laboratory testing group Unilabs. They have invested alongside returning investors, Octopus Ventures, Hummingbird, Isomer Capital, Possible Ventures and Aldea Ventures.
The proceeds will be used to fund Automata’s geographic and team expansion plans, focusing the business on the fast-growing opportunities in the global life sciences sector and developing its brand recognition and presence in the industry.
This latest funding round builds on the success of the $50m Series B round raised in January 2022 which enabled the team to deliver on its initial commercialisation and expansion plans, in particular its deployment footprint in Europe and the UK and rapid growth in the US. Since the last funding round in January 2022, Automata has seen 150% revenue growth. It has also seen a 12-times increase in live system hours in customer-deployed systems.
Current customers include NHS Trusts such as The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, academic institutions including The Francis Crick Institute, testing labs such as HSL, CDMOs and CROs, pharma and biotech companies, such as Astra Zeneca and bit.bio.
“The last two years have been hugely exciting at Automata as we’ve seen LINQ increase the scale of customer workflows as well as meaningfully increasing their ability to generate high quality data – accelerating their pace of discovery and experimentation.''
Mostafa Elsayed, Founder and CEO of Automat
He added, “Achieving a fundraise with exciting and experienced investors in a pretty challenging funding environment is a real endorsement of the potential and capabilities of our lab automation platform and the work the team has achieved.''
He also added, “The raise enables us to continue to focus on our existing and upcoming deployments as well as continuing to develop products that transform how scientists interact with their labs. Most importantly, it will help us to accelerate the impact our users are already having on people’s lives around the world.”
The raise enables us to continue to focus on our existing and upcoming deployments as well as continuing to develop products that transform how scientists interact with their labs. Most importantly, it will help us to accelerate the impact our users are already having on people’s lives around the world.”
Mostafa Elsayed, Founder and CEO of Automata
“The modern lab is a data factory, requiring precise coordination across a suite of lab instruments juggling multiple protocol runs. As a result, the industry needs a lab automation system that is built with an emphasis on speed, reliability, reconfigurability, reproducibility, and scale. Automata’s modular software and hardware LINQ system delivers just that and we’re thrilled to partner with them to build a category-defining business in this space.”
Nan Li, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Dimension
“We are delighted to partner with Automata, an emerging leader in modernizing and automating the global life science industry. Automata’s solutions help increase throughput, lower cost, and accelerate innovation allowing its customers to focus on pushing further into cutting edge medical and life science research.”
Chetan Mehta, Head of Growth Equity of A.P. Moller Holding
bit.bio partners with Automata to automate a key aspect of its production of iPSC derived human cells