Viome Life Sciences announced a $25 million Series D internal funding round and the appointment of new Chief Operating Officer, Kal Raman.
Participants in the round included Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff, Bold Capital and WRG Ventures.
Raman joins Viome as COO from Amazon, where he served as senior vice president of non-media business, marketing and retail technology, and chief digital officer at Samsung. He also previously served as chief operating officer at Groupon.
What it does
The Washington-based company offers users a full-body intelligence test that can then provide dietary advice and create custom-formulated supplements and probiotics, which Viome also develops and sells.
The company also offers an Oral Health Intelligence test with VRx My·Biotics Oral Lozenges to assess and improve oral bacteria.
Viome plans to use the funding to bring on board Raman as COO and lead the expansion of the company’s service offerings and launch its diagnostics division.
“Hosting the world’s largest human and microbial RNA (gene expression) database and employing advanced AI technologies, Viome is at the forefront of early diagnosis of life-threatening and debilitating chronic diseases and cancer. By unravelling the complexities of microbial activity and their interactions with the human immune system, we are paving the way for new ways of understanding health at its root,” Naveen Jain, founder and CEO of Viome told MobiHealthNews in an email.
“With more than 30 predictive models already developed, our diagnostics division is poised to pioneer further innovations aimed at the early detection of cancer, autoimmune and metabolic diseases. This capital injection will accelerate our research and advance the standards and advances in preventive healthcare.”
Market Snapshot
Last year, Viome raised $86.5 million in an oversubscribed Series C funding round, bringing its total funding to $175 million. The company also announced it would launch Gut Intelligence Test in 200 CVS stores.
The funding comes just two years after the company raised $54 million in a convertible note round prior to its Series C. The company previously raised $56 million in a Series B in 2019 and $15 million in August 2017.
In 2021, Viome received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for its mRNA analysis technology and AI platform that detects early signs of oral and pharyngeal cancer through users’ saliva samples.
That same year, the company announced an expanded collaboration with global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline to explore the possibility of researching and developing treatments for some cancers and autoimmune diseases.
The collaboration was intended to enable the two companies to study the link between the gut microbiome and chronic diseases such as autoimmune disorders.
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