Cytely, a Lund-based DeepTech startup, has secured €3 million in a brand new funding spherical to energy the enlargement of Cytely’s sensible microscopy platform, which transforms customary laboratory microscopes into real-time knowledge engines, drastically lowering the time scientists spend on handbook evaluation.
The spherical was led by Ugly Duckling Ventures, with continued assist from present investor Icebreaker.vc. Cytely is a part of the portfolio at SmiLe Enterprise Hub and has workforce members based mostly in Lund, San Diego, and Singapore.
“Scientists have been constrained by workflows constructed for pictures, not knowledge. Cytely transforms any microscope right into a real-time measurement instrument, closing the loop from acquisition to resolution on an experiment-day timescale slightly than a grant cycle,” mentioned Philip Nordenfelt, Cytely Co-founder & CEO. “Our aim is to make each experiment analysis-ready from creation, so discoveries stack and science compounds.”
The funding introduced for Cytely (Sweden, €3 million) suits inside a broader European DeepTech and HealthTech sample seen throughout 2025.
In February 2025, QT Sense (Netherlands) secured €6 million to develop its quantum-sensing expertise for single-cell diagnostics, whereas Pixel Photonics (Germany) acquired €1 million in grant funding to advance multi-mode photon detectors for microscopy and diagnostics.
Collectively, these raises illustrate a shared give attention to automation, precision imaging, and data-centric analysis infrastructures. Inside this context, Cytely’s smart-microscopy method – enabling real-time, analysis-ready knowledge from customary devices – positions it as a part of a rising European motion in direction of accessible, scalable scientific innovation.
Based in 2023, Cytely builds data-centric instruments for organic discovery. Its core platform permits labs to seize, course of, and analyse advanced mobile knowledge robotically. This makes the historically sluggish and handbook technique of microscopy evaluation not solely quicker but additionally statistically strong – unlocking new potentialities for labs that won’t have had entry to high-end infrastructure.
The corporate was co-founded by Philip Nordenfelt, who additionally serves as CEO. With a background in immunology and mechanobiology, Nordenfelt brings each scientific and technical credibility to the desk. His mission is to rework the present microscopy bottleneck right into a feedback-rich workflow that accelerates speculation testing and discovery.
The platform has already been adopted by main analysis establishments, together with Lund College, and is being utilized in biomedical analysis fields equivalent to virology, oncology, and metabolic illnesses.
“Cytely’s software program is a democratising power in science. It decouples world‑class discovery from world‑class funding, empowering any researcher with a microscope to sort out the largest challenges in human well being. All microscopy will turn out to be ‘sensible microscopy’; Cytely is popping the ‘wild west’ of chance into a robust, accessible platform that may speed up discovery for researchers all over the place,” mentioned Dr Vinay Swaminathan, Head of the Laboratory of Cell & Molecular Mechanobiology at Lund College.
Historically, microscopy has revolved round static pictures, leaving researchers to manually assess particular person cells – a course of that may take weeks and infrequently fails to supply knowledge with statistical confidence.
Cytely appears to be like to vary that paradigm by making knowledge, not photos, the first consequence. Its system automates picture acquisition, quantifies whole samples, and affords outcomes which are standardised, reproducible, and analysis-ready in actual time. The software program is hardware-agnostic, designed to work with most fashionable microscopes, eliminating the necessity for expensive, specialised imaging rigs.
“Lastly, we really feel like this undertaking is definitely working… We’re gathering giant‑scale knowledge and unraveling mechanisms of viral latency, one thing that simply wasn’t potential earlier than,” mentioned Prof. Alex Evilevitch.
A case from Lund College exemplifies the platform’s impression: researchers finding out herpesvirus latency have been beforehand unable to course of greater than 0.1% of their pattern knowledge as a consequence of handbook limitations. Utilizing Cytely, they reportedly processed practically 100% of samples and recognized a beforehand unobservable cell-line defence mechanism. The change enabled them to revamp their protocol and obtain extra progress in a single month than within the earlier 5 years.
Past academia, Cytely is delivering robust returns in industrial settings. A most cancers analysis lab utilizing the platform diminished handbook evaluation time by 75%, saving roughly €300k yearly – successfully doubling its workforce.
A nanowire BioTech firm elevated its R&D throughput by 40%, estimating a further $1 million in annual worth. One other lab changed a €400k high-throughput imaging setup solely with Cytely’s pipeline on present microscopes.
The newly secured funding will assist the event of clever acquisition instruments appropriate with all microscope manufacturers, and create one-click workflows for researchers no matter their knowledge evaluation abilities.
These enhancements goal to show the platform into a completely built-in discovery community, the place validated protocols and datasets could be shared, replayed, and iterated upon—in the end laying the muse for predictive evaluation and partially autonomous analysis.
“Their imaginative and prescient is really transformative. We’re thrilled to steer this spherical and assist the mission to make sensible, knowledge‑centric microscopy accessible to each lab,” mentioned Louise Lachmann, Associate at Ugly Duckling Ventures.
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