Volta Labs, a Cambridge, Mass.- based bioautomation company developing solutions to streamline the upstream workflows in genomic sequencing, raised $20m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Maverick Ventures, with participation from Illumina co-founder John Stuelpnagel, Khosla Ventures, Casdin Capital, E14 Funds, Blindspot Ventures and several experienced industry executives including David Singer (Maverick Ventures) was the founding CEO of Affymetrix and a board member of Pacific Biosciences (PACB) and Seer (SEER). Additional supporters include Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe, and existing investor Paul McEwan, co-founder Kapa Biosystems, Agencourt Biosystems.
The company, which has raised over $25M in funding to date, intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of a sequencer-agnostic front-end platform for commercial release in 2023, with a limited release program by the end of this year. To support this effort, Volta is actively hiring across engineering, applications, research and development, and sales.
Founded in 2018 by Udayan Umapathi, CEO, and later added Will Langford, Head of Engineering, as a co-founder, Volta Labs is launching a platform-based solution for sequencing sample preparation by leveraging several novel inventions in fluidic manipulation. The platform integrates components from electronics, automation, and materials industries with a modern software stack to enable sample prep advancements.
The company has developed several technology demonstration prototypes and deployed them at leading research institutions across the country. While Volta’s current focus is on sequencing sample prep, the company envisions going after a variety of applications in the long run. Volta has already developed the proof of concepts for workflows in synthetic biology and workflows for the quantification of proteins.
The company, which was started as a simple exploration with water droplets on a printed circuit board during Umapathi’s graduate work at the MIT Media Lab, later evolved into building biological automation from the ground up, with a mission to fast-track the next genome discovery. In 2019, Volta raised its seed funding from Maverick Ventures and other top VCs.
FinSMEs
17/03/2022