€500k · Pre-Seed · Healthtech · Hannover, Germany
Photo: InhalPlus
Hannover-based InhalPlus has raised a €500,000 pre-seed investment from NBank Capital, the investment arm of Lower Saxony's state development bank. The company announcement says the agreement was notarised on 16 October and makes NBank Capital the Fraunhofer spin-off's first external investor.
InhalPlus is developing a bypass system for delivering inhaled medicines to premature infants who need CPAP or other respiratory support. In conventional setups, aerosol has to travel through the breathing circuit, where it can be diluted in the gas flow, deposited in tubing or lost through leaks. The company's device diverts a small partial flow, enriches it with medication outside the main stream and delivers it close to the infant's nose without interrupting respiratory support.
The company says laboratory tests using a premature-infant breathing simulator produced an inhaled dose up to eight times higher than the standard clinical system. That is a preclinical result, not evidence of benefit in patients. InhalPlus plans a first clinical proof-of-concept study at neonatal centres in early 2027, according to its funding announcement.
Clinical evidence is the next value step
The financing will fund development of the clinical prototype into a series-ready product, regulatory documentation for later medical-device certification and team growth. It will also provide InhalPlus's own contribution to public funding programmes. The company's legal notice states that the technology remains under development, has no CE marking and is not offered for sale.
This makes the pre-seed round a bridge between an engineering result and evidence that hospitals, regulators and later investors can assess. The bypass architecture may reduce a technical source of drug loss, but the 2027 study still has to show that the system can be used safely and consistently in neonatal care. Product design, regulatory work and clinical execution therefore have to progress together.
InhalPlus was founded in August 2026 by Felix Carl Wiegandt, Gerhard Pohlmann and Dirk Schäfer as a spin-off from Fraunhofer ITEM, and it uses Fraunhofer patents under an exclusive licence. Before incorporation, the underlying project secured €2.8m in separate non-dilutive grants for prototype refinement and a clinical proof-of-concept programme. The €500k equity investment adds flexible private capital around those funded work packages. InhalPlus says it is targeting initial market entry at selected hospitals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland from 2029 and plans another financing round in 2027.
