Andrew Alliance, a developer of robotic liquid handling systems, has raised $14 million in its latest funding round.
Andrew Alliance says its technology is is improving repeatability with an innovative approach to liquid handling with conventional laboratory pipettes.
The new $14 million investment came from several of the leading life sciences enterprises, including Tecan Group, the Waters Corporation, Inpeco, Rancilio Cube, Sam Eletr Trust and Omega Funds.
The C-round investment brings together a strategic mix of globally recognized life sciences market leaders, along with private equity investors and including existing investors.
Piero Zucchelli, CEO and a co-founder of Andrew Alliance, says: “We are delighted to expand our team of investors and partners with the industry’s most recognized companies.
“It’s particularly meaningful that both Tecan and Waters appreciate how we’re making robotics accessible to more scientists.”
The Tecan Group is the world leader for automated liquid handling solutions, and Waters has pioneered chromatography, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis innovations serving the life, materials and food sciences for nearly 60 years. Both companies are considered technology leaders in their respective fields.
Paul Tardif, senior director of corporate development at Waters, says: “Andrew Alliance’s robot changes the game for repeatability – and further improves our customers’ operational efficiency.
“The Andrew robots are extraordinarily affordable and solve a persistent problem. Our customers are eager for a ready-to-use solution like this.”
In the past four years, Andrew Alliance says it has become “a leading choice for life science bench robotics”.
It’s relied on by 18 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, the top four diagnostic companies and 16 of the top 20 of the world’s leading academic research institutions.
Andrew Alliance’s flagship offering is a family of flexible, software-driven robot models, each with a footprint about the size of a standard piece of paper.
The robots work “right out of the box”, says the company, and deliver absolute consistency in how liquids are measured and tested, using standard pipettes and consumables. The robot, which is called “Andrew”, is said to perform its job within a few minutes of setup.
David Martyr, CEO of Tecan, says: “Andrew Alliance’s affordable benchtop robotics using conventional pipettes is a new and complementary approach to Tecan’s workstations, which help customers to automate a wide variety of laboratory workflows in research and clinical diagnostics.”
Andrew Alliance will use the funds for continuous product innovation and strategic industry partnerships. It also will extend its close collaboration with customers worldwide to refine future offerings.
Otello Stampacchia, managing director and founder of Omega Funds, an early investor, says: “Demand for better reproducibility continues to increase. We are delighted to work with Andrew Alliance to address this major issue.”
Sam Eletr, a member of the founding team and an early investor, says: “The ongoing innovation in life science creates a vast opportunity for new automated tools and approaches like Andrew Alliance’s robots.”
