The corporate venturing subsidiary of pharmaceutical firm Merck Group has led a $15m series B round for US-based scientific data analytics software developer Riffyn.
M Ventures was joined in the round by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), the investment arm of media company O’Reilly, as well as laboratory equipment producer Waters Corporation and Plug and Play Ventures.
Founded in 2014, Riffyn has developed cloud-based software that assists science, food and chemical companies with research and development processes by applying machine learning and artificial intelligence technology to scientific data.
The funding will go to the development of Riffyn’s data analytics technology and the scaling up of its sales and scientific services. It follows an investment of undisclosed size by Siemens Venture Capital, the investment vehicle for industrial product and appliance manufacturer Siemens, in 2016 that took its total funding to $4.6m.
Riffyn had secured $1.8m in 2014 and an additional $1.6m in early 2016 according to regulatory filings. OATV and Bioeconomy Capital were existing investors prior to Siemens’ investment.