Alithea Genomics announced the closing of a CHF 6.9 million ($8.9 million) seed financing round aimed at accelerating the commercialization of its large-scale RNA sequencing technologies and expanding their use in drug discovery and toxicology research.
The Lausanne, Switzerland–based biotechnology company secured an additional CHF 3 million in the round, led by Genku Ventures and joined by Novalis Biotech, Zürcher Kantonalbank, and several private investors. The new capital brings the company’s total seed financing to CHF 6.9 million.
Alithea plans to use the proceeds to accelerate commercialization of its 1536-well MERCURIUS DRUG-seq kits, designed to enable industrial-scale RNA sequencing for primary drug screening and exploratory toxicology. The technology allows researchers to process up to 1,536 RNA samples simultaneously, significantly increasing throughput while lowering costs associated with traditional RNA sequencing workflows.
The company said its platforms reduce the time, reagent use, and manual operations typically required for RNA sequencing sample preparation. By enabling massively multiplexed library preparation, Alithea aims to make large-scale transcriptomic data generation more accessible for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
In addition to scaling commercialization, Alithea plans to invest in further technology development and the creation of proprietary transcriptomic data assets. The company believes such datasets could play an important role in training artificial intelligence and machine learning models used in drug discovery and predictive biological research.
Alongside the funding announcement, Alithea also revealed leadership changes. Current chairman Frederik Decouttere has been appointed chief executive officer. Co-founder Riccardo Dainese, who previously served as CEO, will transition to chief commercial officer to focus on business development and commercialization efforts. Board member Kaspar Binz will assume the role of chairman.
Founded in 2020 at EPFL in Lausanne, Alithea Genomics develops RNA-seq technologies including BRB-seq and DRUG-seq. These solutions enable researchers to analyze gene expression by sequencing RNA to determine which genes are active under specific conditions, such as disease states or drug exposure. The insights generated can help guide decisions throughout the drug discovery and development process.
The company positions its platforms as a way to generate large-scale transcriptomic datasets that can support modern biology research, biomarker discovery, and AI-driven therapeutic development.
KEY QUOTES
“Alithea’s technology has reached a level of scalability and data quality that fundamentally changes what is possible in transcriptomics. This is not incremental progress — it is a step-change that unlocks industrial-scale biology for drug discovery, toxicology, and AI-driven research. Our additional investment reflects our conviction that Alithea is becoming the data engine enabling the next generation of therapeutics and predictive biological models.”
Jan Van den Berghe, Lead Investor, Novalis Biotech
“As Alithea continues to innovate, expanding product commercialization with new innovative RNA sample prep kits to disrupt the genomic research sector, we have transitioned my operational role to CEO, enabling Riccardo to fully focus on commercial and business development, ensuring we meet the needs of our customers. This new funding will enable Alithea to unlock the full potential of our unique RNA-based technology platforms to a scale and price point that are unique to our industry. In a world where the impact of AI becomes more visible every single day and where high quality data is key to further improve AI models, Alithea’s RNA-seq platforms are set to accelerate our customer’s research, toxicology and screening projects significantly. We’d like to thank all of our investors for their continued support and confidence in Alithea.”
Frederik Decouttere, Chief Executive Officer, Alithea Genomics
