Silicon Photonic chips scale access to healthcare
BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SiPhox Health, the leader in building the next generation of lab-grade home health testing with silicon photonics, raised $27 million in funding including a $10M Seed financing and a $17M Series A round. The Series A round was led by Intel Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures, Kortex Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Metaplanet, Shorewind Capital, LongeVC, Overlap Holdings and Duke Capital Partners. The Seed funding was led by Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator with participation from Metaplanet, Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative, Rsquared, Vituity, Paul Buchheit, Balaji Srinivasan, Bob Lee, and Longevity Tech Fund among others. Intel Capital managing director Srini Ananth will also join SiPhox Health’s board of directors to further accelerate the company’s growth.
Six out of ten Americans are living with a chronic disease. Access to low-cost, convenient health testing can help prevent and manage these conditions, improving the lives of patients and enabling many healthcare innovations that are bottlenecked by existing testing approaches. In response to this crisis, MIT scientists Diedrik Vermeulen and Michael Dubrovsky had a vision of using silicon photonics, the semiconductor technology that transformed internet connectivity, to put a lab-grade health testing device in every home.
“At SiPhox Health, we are leveraging the trillions of dollars invested in the semiconductor industry to enable lab-quality results in a consumer-ready, user-friendly device,” explained Diedrik Vermeulen, SiPhox Health co-founder and CEO, and a silicon photonics pioneer who played a crucial role in developing the first coherent silicon photonic transceiver chip, now responsible for a significant share of global internet traffic.
The Series A funding will enable team expansion as SiPhox Health works towards FDA clearance for its SiPhox Home platform, which will offer a broad menu of proteins and hormone tests from a finger prick blood sample, with results in five minutes or less. In the meantime, SiPhox Health has launched a mail-in blood collection kit that measures 17 biomarkers for inflammation, metabolic, hormonal and cardiovascular health.
“SiPhox’s goal is to create category-defining health tracking products starting with the SiPhox Home, which is a 100-fold improvement over existing blood diagnostics. Eventually, our technology will enable the ultimate wearable device for measuring proteins, hormones, and small molecules continuously,” said Michael Dubrovsky, SiPhox Health co-founder and Chief Product Officer. “Every cell in the human body is a much more advanced sensor than anything on the market today, showing we are nowhere near the physical limits for performance and miniaturization in diagnostics.”
“The rapid growth in telehealth and home health sectors necessitates a new paradigm in diagnostics. SiPhox Health’s fast and accurate at-home testing is poised to change the patient journey for employers, pharma, insurers and health systems,” said Srini Ananth, managing director at Intel Capital. “Investments in silicon photonics over the past two decades for the datacom and telecom industry have enabled the massive scaling of the internet and cloud computing. This has set the stage for startups like SiPhox to apply silicon photonics technology to new frontiers. We are highly impressed with their technology and approach to tackling this opportunity.”
About SiPhox Health
SiPhox Health is pioneering the most advanced blood testing technology in the world. As a leader in optical biochip technology, SiPhox is introducing integrated photonics into home healthcare for the very first time. The SiPhox Home and Health testing systems offer innovative and efficient blood collection solutions for consumers, healthcare systems, pharmaceutical companies, and research teams focusing on longevity and chronic disease management. Our Burlington, MA-based headquarters houses our cutting-edge laboratory and a team of top-tier scientists and experts, all dedicated to making regular testing accessible, affordable, and painless for everyone.
The SiPhox Home, currently available for investigational use only, features a growing menu of multiplexed protein and hormone tests designed for home use.
Contacts
Email: [email protected]
Twitter DM: @siphoxhealth