US-based gene sequencing technology producer Edico Genome has closed a $22m series B round led by Dell Technologies Capital, the investment subsidiary that computing hardware producer Dell Technologies unveiled this week.
Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm, also took part in the round together with venture capital firm Axon Ventures and angel investor Greg Lucier.
Edico Genome has developed a gene sequencing platform called Dragen that analyses data on site and in the cloud while offering real-time, lossless compression to reduce storage costs.
Dragen can analyse an entire genome within 20 minutes locally or in under 10 minutes in the cloud – down from the 24 hours required by previous technologies. The funding will go toward market expansion and further development of Dragen.
Qualcomm Ventures previously led Edico’s $10m series A round in 2014, with participation from Axon and Lucier.
Pieter van Rooyen, chief executive of Edico Genome, said: “We welcome Dell Technologies Capital to the Edico team and appreciate the expertise available to us as we accelerate our product portfolio and revenue generation.
“Dell’s backing will help enable the Dragen platform to radically change healthcare by unlocking data to reveal new insight into diseases, speed critical diagnoses and guide precision medicine.”