February 23, 2022 -- Automata announced it has raised $50 million in series B funding to help life sciences rapidly innovate, diagnose, and discover at scale. The investment will enable significant development of Automata Labs for scientists working across diagnostic, drug discovery, and biotech in the U.K. and beyond.
With this technology, life scientists can shorten turnaround times by scaling capacities and spend more time on their analyses, which also leads to cost reductions, the firm said. Automata's systems have been successfully utilized by the National Health Service's pathology labs to help them meet diagnostic backlogs and upscale capacity. One lab is running 40 fully automated stations 24/7, according to the company.
The investment round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from returning investors Hummingbird, Latitude Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Isomer Capital, as well as strategic investors such as In-Q-Tel.