Noah Johnson 
Nov 17, 2023
SiPhox Health with $27 million funding — which includes $10 million in seed and $17 million in new Series A capital — wants to conduct advanced blood testing using silicon photonic chip technology to put a lab-grade health testing device in every home, TechCrunch reported, revealing that this is the semiconductor technology that transformed internet connectivity.
SiPhox Health’s Series A round was led by Intel Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures, Kortex Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Metaplanet, Shorewind Capital, LongeVC, Overlap Holdings, and Duke Capital Partners.
The seed investment — that also included Metaplanet, Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative, Rsquared, Vituity, Paul Buchheit, Balaji Srinivasan, Bob Lee, and Longevity Tech Fund — was co-led by Khosal Ventures and Y Combinator.
According to the details, the Series A funding will also enable SiPhox Health to expand its team of 30 people in the areas of biology, scientists, engineers and mechanical engineers and expand its current business offerings.
It should be noted that almost six out of 10 Americans are living with a chronic disease, but access to convenient and low-cost health testing isn’t always available for patients, and bottlenecks still exist with current testing approaches.
What is SiPhox Health?
The company was started in 2020 by MIT scientists Diedrik Vermeulen and Michael Dubrovsky and was part of the Y Combinator summer cohort that year.
At the time, the Burlington, Massachusetts–based company was developing a circuit board for optical chips with the goal of replacing refrigerator-sized diagnostic machines with a tiny chip. Its first product was a $1 COVID-19 test on a disposable cartridge.
CEO Vermeulen explained: "Other at-home blood-testing technologies focused on the paper strip and other collection methods that are the less expensive components, rather than on the testing device. SiPhox Health, instead, started with the more expensive side — the lab instrument."
“Our approach is to miniaturise all the components onto silicon chips,” he told TechCrunch. “Silicon photonics technology leaves the instrument completely untouched, so we inherit all the functionality, multiplexing capability, sensitivity, and so on, and bring that to the consumer.”
Moreover, SiPhox Health enables patients and their doctors to get lots of data points to better help make real-time health decisions.
SiPhox Health also offers a test kit and tests for 17 biomarkers, essentially your basic panel, in the areas of inflammation, cardiovascular health, metabolic fitness and hormone balance. Sold on a subscription basis, kits are $95 with a monthly membership of $16 that includes perks like access to continuous glucose monitors and personalised biohacking tools.
“We’re currently growing exponentially, from when we initially started to learn about the market and blood testing,” Dubrovsky said. “We are now finding early signs of chronic diseases, like pre-diabetes, in about 20% of all the tests we run.”
