EarlySight banks 2.3 million seed investment

Founded in 2019, EarlySight uses a novel approach to provide a single cell level imaging of the back of the eye, called the retina. Its technology combines hardware and software to propose a unique medical device that can observe the cells affected at the early stage of the most prevalent retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (196 m people affected worldwide), glaucoma (76 m people affected worldwide) or diabetic retinopathy (95 m people affected worldwide), to treat them sooner and more efficiently.

The EPFL spinoff has completed the first closing of its CHF 3 million seed investment round led by Verve Ventures with participation from Nina Capital, a European early-stage health tech fund and other private investors that followed a pre-seed investment. The secured CHF 2.3 million will allow EarlySight to grow the team, optimize its technology and perform additional clinical validations. In addition, the startup plans to reach important milestones as it prepares for market entry.

“The need for deeper understanding and earlier diagnosis of retinal diseases is only going to increase with the current trends of an ageing population. Earlysight has the right ingredients to address this need”, said Sebastian Anastassiou, Nina Capital.

“Preliminary results indicate a large window of action between the early onset of the disease and current diagnosis timing, thus confirming the clinical use case. EarlySight is also very relevant for pharmaceutical development, as the lack of objective clinical endpoints has made the development of early treatment difficult. Overall, EarlySight really has the potential to be the next breakthrough technology in retinal imaging, in the same way, that OCT was 20 years ago”, says Susanne Schorsch, Investment Manager at Verve Ventures. The seed round remains open until July for a second closing with an additional CHF 600k investment.

(Press release /RAN)

Photo: EarlySight’s co-founders Mathieu Künzi (CTO), Timothé Laforest (CEO), Prof. Christophe Moser and Professor of Ophthalmology Francine Behar-Cohen (left to right)