A Durham startup making advanced microscopes raises $25M
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
Ramona Optics, a Durham startup making advanced microscopes for universities and life sciences companies, has raised $25 million from investors in a Series A round.
Why it matters: The funding will allow what has been a scrappy team of around 25 employees to grow and meet demand across the globe for Ramona's microscopes and software, Mark Harfouche, co-founder of Ramona, told Axios.
Driving the news: The funding is being led by Chicago-based ARCH Venture Partners and other venture firms like Stealthpoint Ventures and ND Capital. The money will help the company grow its sales teams and add more engineering support.
- The company is also moving from its office on Main Street in Durham to a larger space within the Venable Center in downtown Durham.
Zoom in: Founded in California in 2016 by two graduate students at Caltech, Ramona moved to Durham when co-founder Roarke Horstmeyer landed a job at Duke University as a professor.
- While traditional microscopes have been designed for the eye, Ramona's microscopes are designed for computation first and foremost. Without the need for human interaction, its machines can take large-volume images of samples and then run them through its software for analysis.
- The company initially gained traction with local customers, like labs at Duke and companies like AgBiome.
How it works: The company's microscopes are designed to increase the scale and speed that labs are able to examine biological samples and glean insights from them.
- The microscopes — which look like a large coffee machine and can range in price from $100,000 to $300,000 — are able to take scores of images of samples without any human interaction and deliver analysis from them through the company's AI-driven software.
- Each of the machines can replace 24 traditional microscopes, Harfouche said.
- "We provide our users and customers the ability to automatically do the analysis by the time their sample comes out," Harfouche said. "I think [our company] takes processes that used to take weeks and shrinks them down to days."
What's next: Currently its microscopes are available in 4x and 10x magnification, Harfouche said. But customers are always asking for more abilities.
- The company's research-and-development team is working on higher magnifications and improving how its software delivers analysis and results.