NEW YORK – Danish biotechnology firm Samplix said on Thursday that it has been awarded a €2.5 million ($2.7 million) grant, as well as a €7.5 million equity investment, from the European Innovation Council to support the development of its microfluidics platform.
Copenhagen-based Samplix will use the accelerator investment to develop approaches for the functional characterization of single cells. Samplix was one of 32 "deep tech" companies to receive an EIC accelerator investment during the first call of the year.
CEO Lars Kongsbak said in a statement that EIC's support will allow the company to develop more advanced products and "dramatically broaden our market scope." He said that Samplix intends to soon open an office in California's Silicon Valley to "be closer to our customers and to exploit several partnership opportunities in that area."
As part of EIC's blended financing of Samplix, its investors are expected to match its €7.5 million equity investment, meaning Samplix stands to gain €17.5 million through its inclusion in the new accelerator. Separately, the company this month concluded an investment round with existing investors worth €5 million, the firm said.
Samplix was founded in 2013 as a spinout from a biofuels company called Estibio. The firm first focused on developing a PCR-free target enrichment approach that was commercialized in 2019 as XDrop. Last year, Samplix introduced XDrop Sort, a microfluidics-based system for use in high-throughput gene and cell screening applications.