ArgusEye announces the successful closure of a new funding round — led by Finnish Voima Ventures

ArgusEye, an emerging player in transformative sensor technology for biopharmaceutical manufacturing, today announced the successful closure of a new funding round, raising 32.5M SEK (approximately 2.8M Euro). This round was led by Finnish VC Voima Ventures and co-led by Eir Ventures, who followed on to its prior seed investment. The investment moves ArgusEye towards their goal of transforming how new biomedicines are developed and produced.

Established in 2017 by Erik Martinsson and Daniel Aili, ArgusEye embarked on its journey with a collective vision to revolutionise conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing methods. Leveraging 15 years of research, Erik and Daniel initiated their partnership at a laboratory in Linköping, Sweden. This collaboration laid the groundwork for the pioneering development of their LSPR (localised surface plasmon resonance) technology, which relies on gold nanoparticles for precise and targeted protein measurements.

The gold-coated sensors are illuminated with a precise frequency of light which causes the Gold to vibrate at a known rate. Attached to these sensors are ligands. Ligands can be found in our blood, where they help transport oxygen by binding it to iron. Because of their unique ability to bind things to metal, when the ligands catch a protein, it increases the mass and changes the vibration of the underlying Gold. This change can be measured and is used to provide real time information on the batch composition.

In traditional biopharmaceutical manufacturing, quality control involves labour intensive offline testing, leading to significant delays in defect detection. It’s much like trying to bake bread blindfolded and only knowing if it’s worked out or not after it’s out of the oven. This soon-to-be outdated approach hampers efficiency in an industry primed for moving to real-time solutions.

In 2021, they secured a breakthrough partnership with industry giant Bayer. Since then ArgusEye has expanded its customer base and validated the technology together with multiple international customers. During March 2024, the first product in the company’s sensor system platform, Auga ™, was released and their sights are now set on expanding the range of devices they offer.

Jenny Engerfelt, Investment Director at Voima Ventures, remarked on the funding round, “ArgusEye’s technology holds the promise of driving down healthcare costs by improving efficiency in biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes, leading to better health outcomes for more people.”

Eir Ventures also expressed their enthusiasm for their continued partnership with ArgusEye. Lene Gerlach, Partner at Eir Ventures, states that, “As one of the main shareholders in the company, we are extremely proud and excited to further support ArgusEye’s journey of bringing revolutionary sensor technologies for next generation bioprocessing to life, enabling automated development and production of medicines to make them accessible to a larger part of the population with a reduced ecological footprint.”

Erik, the CEO of ArgusEye, shared the following details: “As ArgusEye embarks on its scale-up phase, our focus is twofold: expanding our market footprint geographically and diversifying our product offerings to encompass the entire pharmaceutical process chain, from upstream cell growth to downstream purification and late-stage formulation as well as GMP production. This strategic approach aligns with our commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions that address the evolving needs of the biopharmaceutical industry and our vision to enable a more sustainable and democratic reach of biomedicines through real-time quality control.”

The company is currently accepting customer orders, ready to deliver its revolutionary sensor technologies that enhance efficiency and sustainability in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.