Delft-based Delmic, a company that produces correlative light and electron microscopy solutions, announced on Monday that it has secured €4M from Value Creation Capital (VCC) and the European Investment Council (EIC) Fund.
VCC injects “Intellectual Capital” into ‘groundbreaking’ innovations. It backs ventures active in high-tech (from the TechNano Fund), cybersecurity (from the Security of Things Fund), business software, data intelligence, and IT-managed services.
The EIC Fund from the European Commission invests across all technologies and verticals, and all EU countries and countries associated with Horizon Europe. The Fund also pays attention to the empowerment and support of female founders as well as the ambition to reduce the innovation divide among EU countries.
Hermann Hauser, EIC Fund Board Member, says, “This unique form of financing via EIC- combining grants and equity – is proving itself highly attractive to Europe’s most promising startups. Our investment will provide Delmic with the means to develop and scale their business in Europe.”
Developing solutions for electron microscopy
Delmic is creating ‘powerful’ and ‘user-friendly’ light and electron microscopy tools to help researchers and companies get insights quickly and easily. The company was founded in 2010 by Albert Polman, Christiaan Zonnevylle, Jacob Hoogenboom, Sander den Hoedt and Pieter Kruit.
It believes that nanoscale photography is critical to advancing the basic knowledge of the world around us, but the technology to do so is presently only available to a small number of groups.
The company’s goal is to make microscopy approachable through automation of the complete process, both by their technology as well as the requirements of the markets.
“Our early successes were the result of collaborations with partners in the field, such as the Charged Particle Optics group of the Delft University of Technology and NWO-Institute AMOLF. Together, we developed the correlative light and electron microscopy system SECOM and the cathodoluminescence detector SPARC Spectral,” says Delmic.
Currently, the company’s solutions are used across a variety of applications in life science and material science research.
“Our CRYO solutions enable contamination-free workflows for cryo-ET, while our Cathodoluminescence portfolio helps researchers understand the optical properties of materials and devices at the nanoscale. Our Fast Imaging division breaks down the boundaries of research by offering unprecedented volumes of data,” mentions Delmic.
Capital utilisation
Delmis says the funds will help Delft University of Technology spinoff and physics research centre Amolf advance the creation and global sales of their light and electron microscope products.
In a statement, the company mentions, “At Delmic, we envision a future in which the cost per sample (or per mm2) of nanostructural data has drastically fallen, allowing for democratised access to data. With this access, researchers can impact anything from a renewed understanding of disease to the next generation of more energy-efficient devices.”
“To make this vision a reality, we are committed to advanced automation that makes it much easier to run electron microscopes continuously.”
CEO Sander den Hoedt, adds, “With this new investment round, we’ve found two very strong partners. VCC brings a wealth of experience in the deep tech space with over 20 years of portfolio management. The EIC Fund brings a broad network.”
“This investment round allows us to scale our service, sales and application activities, thereby rolling out our unique products to a wider audience.”
