Israel-based blood analysis device developer Sight Diagnostics secured $71m in series D financing on Wednesday from investors including chemical manufacturer Koch Industries and diversified conglomerate CK Hutchison.
Equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd also took part in the round. Koch Industries and CK Hutchison participated through Koch Disruptive Technologies and Longliv Ventures respectively.
Sight Diagnostics has developed imaging technology dubbed Sight OLO that can capture more than 1,000 images of a blood sample as small as two drops, and which uses artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically analyse the results.
The company’s first product, Parasight, can detect malaria and has so far been used for nearly a million tests.
The series D funding has been allocated to expanding Sight Diagnostics’ commercial operations internationally. It will also drive research and development efforts centred on detecting additional diseases such as sepsis and cancer, and the prediction of severity of Covid-19 for a patient.
Chase Koch, president of Koch Disruptive Technologies, said: “We firmly believe that Sight’s method of using machine vision to analyse blood is a significant leap forward from the current alternative in healthcare.
“Not only is the company bringing truly innovative solutions to the blood diagnostics industry, it is also driving a vision to decentralise information and increase consumer access in healthcare markets across the world.”
Sight Diagnostics has now raised more than $124m in total, it said. Longliv Ventures led a $27.8m series C round in February 2019 that included OurCrowd, Go Capital, New Alliance, an unnamed medical equipment maker and private investors Jack Nicklaus and Steven Esrick.
An earlier report had identified Anatomy, a fund co-owned by conglomerate Access Industries’ Clal Biotechnology subsidiary, as an investor in the series C round, though that was not confirmed in the final announcement.
Innovation Endeavors was revealed as a Sight Diagnostics investor in mid-2018, when the company said it had secured $25m across its series A and B rounds. It has also raised about $9.9m across three rounds on OurCrowd, which named pharmaceutical firm Haisco, Innovation Endeavors and Go Capital as co-investors.
Image courtesy of Sight Diagnostics.
