Founders Fund Leads $36 Million Financing Round in Emulate

Emulate, Inc. today announced that it has secured a $36 million Series C financing round led by Founders Fund. The funding also includes additional new investors including ALS Investment Fund, SciFi VC, members of GlassWall Syndicate Association, as well as several existing investors. Funds from this financing round will directly impact the company’s expansion of its suite of products within its Human Emulation System™, broadening functionality and enhancing commercial efforts, so that researchers in the pharmaceutical industry can use Organs-on-Chips technology across the entire drug discovery and development process.

“The dependence of drug development on animal models for safety and efficacy testing has hit a wall,” said Aaron VanDevender, Chief Scientist and Principal at Founders Fund. “As therapeutic approaches become ever more precise and complex, the limitations of legacy animal models increasingly prevent accurate predictions of drug responses in humans. This crisis has simultaneously put patients at risk of unpredictable side effects while inhibiting the approval of novel life-saving therapies. Emulate’s platform uses human cells to recapitulate human physiology, enabling the development of safer, more efficacious drugs. We believe its adoption by drug developers is a scientific, commercial, and moral imperative.”

Proceeds of the financing will be used to expand the functionality of Emulate’s automated, lab-ready Human Emulation System — which is comprised of Organ-Chips, instrumentation, and software applications. The company will add advanced biological capabilities to its Organ-Chip products, including the Liver-Chip, Intestine-Chip, Lung-Chip, Brain-Chip, and human-relevant models of thrombosis and immune system modulation. The expanded Organ-Chip product suite will also include a range of disease models that will be designed to enable drug efficacy testing and elucidate new insights into disease mechanisms. In addition, the Human Emulation System will be enhanced with new software applications that enable data analysis, integrate with standard analytical approaches, and foster collaboration between and among teams that use Emulate’s platform.

“Emulate is energized and inspired to be among the companies in the Founders Fund portfolio,” said Geraldine A. Hamilton, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Emulate. “At this next stage of our company’s growth, we are expanding our product portfolio, as well as building our commercial-readiness and community support team to drive integration of our platform by early adopters in the pharmaceutical industry.”

With the financing transaction, VanDevender joins Emulate’s board of directors. Founders Fund is a leading Bay Area venture capital firm whose partners have founded and funded companies including PayPal, Facebook and SpaceX. Emulate joins Founders Fund’s portfolio of companies that aim to radically change the world for the better.

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