€25m · Other round · Healthtech · Birkerød, Denmark
Birkerød-based Samplix has reached a €25m first closing in a financing led by WLanholding. The company says all major shareholders participated and that the round remains open to additional investors, with a €30m target. The headline amount is not all fresh cash: €3m is new capital and €22m comes from converting shareholder convertible bonds.
Function-first screening on existing lab equipment
Samplix develops Xdrop, a platform for analysing what individual cells do rather than relying only on the markers they express. The system encapsulates living cells and assay components in double-emulsion droplets, turning each droplet into a small reaction chamber. Researchers can then screen, sort and recover cells using standard flow cytometers and cell sorters.
For antibody discovery, Samplix says Xdrop can process millions of antibody-producing cells to find rare candidates with a desired biological function. Linking that function to the secreting cell and its antibody sequence can shorten the path from a large cell population to a smaller set of candidates for further validation. The platform also supports secretion assays, immune-cell interactions, cytotoxicity studies and genomics workflows.
The commercial mechanism is the compatibility with equipment laboratories already use. A buyer can add droplet-based, single-cell screening without replacing its flow-cytometry stack with a specialised detection system. That may reduce deployment friction, but it does not remove the scientific work: customers still need suitable assays, reproducible protocols and evidence that selected cells translate into useful therapeutic candidates.
Most of the financing repairs the balance sheet
The financing structure matters. Converting €22m of shareholder bonds into equity can reduce debt pressure and strengthen Samplix's balance sheet, while only €3m immediately adds new capital. The company says the package will support commercial expansion, deeper partnerships with biopharma and academia, and continued development of Xdrop. Additional investors could take the round to €30m, but that target is not yet closed.
WLan founder Werner Lanthaler, the former chief executive of Evotec, is expected to join Samplix's board within the next year. His industry network may help with commercial introductions, but the operating test is whether the repaired capital structure and new cash produce repeatable adoption: more Xdrop deployments, expanding use inside customer workflows and partnerships that move beyond evaluation projects.
