$40m fundraise backed by Dimension and A.P. Moller Holding, to expand growing life science lab automation offering
- Automata’s technology reduces drug development and testing timelines, costs and error rates – fundraise underlines strong investor & industry endorsement of its potential.
- Enables expansion of commercialisation strategy for efficiency-driving and capacity solving lab automation technology to the life sciences sector
October 2023, London UK
Automata Technologies, 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 organisations are increasingly focussed 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.
Mostafa Elsayed, Founder and CEO of Automata, commented:
“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.
“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.
“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
Nan Li, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Dimension, added:
“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.”
Chetan Mehta, Head of Growth Equity of A.P. Moller Holding, added:
“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.”
About Automata
Automata is a leading robotics and automation company, powering the laboratories of the future. Its automating technology enables new and improved processes, empowers scientists with transformed ways of working and delivers faster translation of results from ‘bench to bedside’.
Automata’s Lab Automation Platform meets labs where they are on their automation journey, and is the trusted partner to improving efficiencies and freeing scientists to work on new and innovative discoveries. It is trusted by customers including NHS Trusts and are supporting advancements across core testing labs, academic institutions, CDMOs, pharma and biotech companies.
Automata’s LINQ automation platform is a vertically integrated platform which includes:
- Software that empowers scientists to design, schedule and run their workflows.
- Proprietary hardware that acts as the core of a lab’s robotics ecosystem enabling modular configurations, higher throughputs and parallel workflows.
- Data availability at every stage of an experiment or workflow.
- OEM agnostic approach to third party instrumentation allowing frictionless integration with a variety of labs and equipment
Automata is based in London, UK with operations also in Boston, US. Learn more about Automata’s solutions here.
About Dimension
Dimension is a multi-stage investment firm dedicated to the interface of technology and the life sciences. The firm launched in 2023 with a $350M fund and partners with visionary founders to build enduring, category-defining businesses across software, infrastructure, therapeutics, diagnostics, and clinical development. Dimension invests in companies around the globe and has offices in New York and San Francisco. Learn more at www.dimensioncap.com.
About A.P. Moller Group
The A.P. Moller Group is a diversified group of industry-leading companies. A.P. Moller Holding is the parent company of the Group, investing in and building businesses with a positive impact on society – ‘nyttig virksomhed’. See more at www.apmoller.com
Enquiries
| Automata Technologies Mostafa Elsayed, Chief Executive Officer | +44 (0)20 3991 2253 |
| Instinctif Partners (Media enquiries) Rozi Morris, Melanie Toyne Sewell | +44 (0)20 7457 2020 automata@instinctif.com |
