Recalls in the food and beverage industry due to contamination events can have catastrophic effects. Not only will the company have to pay fines and losses, but its impact on the brand reputation may last for a long time.
This is the reason sporeis a Paris-based DeepTech startup that tries to reinvent microbiology testing to avoid the next PR crisis in the food industry. After feeding Pre-discount of 8 million euros. (current exchange rate is $8.3 million) A year ago, the company just received a $23 million Series A.
Singular Lead. Point 72 Ventures, the first-class adventurer (the family office of the Peugeot family), Station F and Lord David Prior also attended the meeting. Existing investors LocalGlobe, no tag venture capital and Famille C are also investing more money in the company.
The reason Spore.bio managed to rise rapidly after a pre-seeded round is due to real customer interest. The startup has signed some commercial contracts that can cover up to 200 factories. spore.bio must open a waitlist to make sure it can keep up with the requirements.
So, what makes Spore.bio’s technology special? In the food and beverage industry, microbial testing takes several days. The company must take samples and send them to a dedicated lab for testing.
“Imagine that we’re in 2022, everything is super optimized. You’re lean manufacturing everywhere, and each step is optimized and counted in minutes to get results, moving from one step to another.” United Founder and CEO Amine Raji told TechCrunch. “And BAM, you did an incredible five-day test in the agri-food industry and 14-day tests in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry to get results because you have to wait for the bacteria to grow.”
First, testing must be performed because the Petri dish-based test involves tilting against any potential bacteria. Therefore, you cannot contaminate other parts of the factory in your tests. Secondly, the bacterial incubation part takes time.
The process of using spore.bio is completely different. The company sends lights of specific wavelengths to the sample and records the spectrum signature. Thanks to pre-trained deep learning algorithms, it can detect whether this particular sample contains any bacteria or pathogens.
This model is the most important asset of Spore.bio. The startup has signed a partnership with the Pasteur Institute to obtain a biobank of its bacterial samples.
In the coming months, it hopes to produce test machines that customers can use directly in their own factories. As a result, microbiological tests can be performed directly on site. The company claims it reduces the overall process from days to minutes.
Prior to founding spore.bio, Raji was a food and beverage manufacturing engineer working for Nestlé. He naturally focused on the industry he already knew. But it turns out that microbiology tests are much bigger than expected.
Companies that make cosmetics have also expressed interest in Spore.bio’s technology. “Manufacturers need to get rid of preservatives due to customer needs, environmental issues and other reasons. “Besides preservatives are preservatives that kill bacteria,” Raj said. ”
Similarly, the pharmaceutical industry has found use cases for state-of-the-art treatments. “There is an increasing demand, especially for innovative therapies, such as gene and cell therapies,” Raj said, adding that the shelf life of these products tends to be short and can be as low as seven days. Therefore, these therapies cannot complete the usual testing process in such a short time.
With today’s funding round, the startup is expected to grow its team significantly. There are currently 30 people working at the company and by the end of 2025, they will have 50 people.
