Copenhagen-based startup Reshape Biotech has made waves by raising $7.1M to add to its $1M seed funding round, creating a new national record of $8.1M. This accomplishment was made possible thanks to the support of Acme Capital, as well as top investors Nicholas Francis, founder of Unity, Per Falholt, and Look Up Ventures, which includes esteemed entrepreneurs Tommy Ahlers and Nicolaj Reffstrup. The startup develops accessible automation solutions that will help leaders in food, agriculture and biologics digitize research and collaborate globally. With the additional funding, Reshape Biotech is looking to expand its product offering and take its already innovative analysis platform to the next level.
A member of the Y Combinator 2021 class, Reshape Biotech allows companies to easily digitize microbiology experiments and virtually collaborate on a global scale. Traditionally, lab automation has been extremely expensive and difficult to implement. Reshape is offering affordable robotic instruments by leveraging systems engineering, mechatronics, cloud computing, machine-learning-based data analysis and a deep understanding of biotech applications. Its robots are vertically integrated across hardware, software, and microbiology to accurately capture data while eliminating redundant processes. Reshape currently serves 20 customers including researchers, scientists, lab techs, and CXOs working in agricultural and food microbiology, ingredients development, industrial biotech and more. The power of its technology and service has resulted in 100% customer retention and 300% YoY growth.
“Biotech is the most important industry of the 21st century. For it to flourish in the future, we have to make the discovery process more accessible and affordable. Automation at scale is critical to making that a reality,” said Reshape Biotech founder & CEO Carl-Emil Grøn. “We are ‘reshaping’ manual processes that have remained largely unchanged over the last 100 years. Our technology is helping R&D labs troubleshoot in real time with production sites located tens of thousand miles away and letting researchers check results from home, allowing remote work to prosper in lab environments. It’s an efficient approach that better fits the world we live in today.”
The Reshape platform creates a new R&D infrastructure for leaders in food, agriculture and biology, enabling digitized research that can be shared to benefit scientists everywhere, regardless of physical lab location. The distributed platform with connected lab equipment empowers scientists and technicians to conduct research 1,000X more rapidly than today. Since 2021, Reshape has grown its robotic fleet from one to 110, experienced 10X revenue growth, and facilitated groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs.
“Digitizing laborious processes in research and development for food and biotech industries can lead to healthier societies for people and our planet,” said Tang-Jespersen. “Reshape challenges the status quo of the last century of microbiology experimentation with a cost-efficient product that allows for much higher volume experiments, more meaningful data points, and faster results. This technology has the potential to change the integrity of our food supply, biotech, and more.”
Headquartered in Copenhagen, Reshape currently distributes equipment across Europe and the U.S. In the near future, the company plans to open a location in North America and expand development, application science and sales efforts to scale its robotic fleet in the coming years.
