Spore.Bio Secures €23M for Its AI-Driven Photonic Handheld Pathogen Scanner
Spore.Bio, a Paris-based deeptech startup, has raised $23 million in a Series A funding round, led by Singular, just two years after its founding. The company is developing AI-powered microbiology testing that significantly reduces the time needed to detect bacterial contamination in food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic manufacturing.
The round also saw participation from Point 72 Ventures, 1st Kind Ventures, Station F, Lord David Prior, LocalGlobe, No Label Ventures, and Famille C. The funding follows an €8 million pre-seed round raised in December 2023.
Spore.Bio’s handheld device projects UV-Infrared light onto samples and records the resulting spectral signatures, which are then analyzed by a deep learning model trained on both contaminated and uncontaminated data; according to co-founder and CEO Amine Raji in a 2023 TechCrunch interview, this approach allows on-the-spot testing “on the factory floor,” effectively eliminating the need to culture samples in offsite labs and reducing multi-day wait times to near-instant pathogen detection.
The startup has already signed commercial contracts covering 200 factories and has opened a waitlist for additional customers. While initially focused on food and beverage production, Spore.Bio has also identified potential applications in cosmetics and advanced therapeutic fields such as gene and cell therapies.
Alongside the funding announcement, Spore.Bio CEO Amine Raji revealed a partnership with the Institut Pasteur and the acquisition of Greentropism, a competitor specializing in spectral analysis, chemometrics, and spectroscopy-based quality control with AI-assisted modeling. The company plans to deploy dozens of testing systems in factories over the next few months and will double the size of its team, which is expected to grow from 30 to 50 employees by the end of 2025.
Cover: iStock
Topic: AI in Bio
