Bionaut Labs Closes $43M in Series B Financing

Bionaut Labs has received a $43.2 million infusion of Series B funding, bringing the company’s total financing raised to date to $63.2 million.

The funding round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from new investors Deep Insight, OurCrowd, PSPRS, Sixty Degree Capital, Dolby Family Ventures, GISEV Family Ventures, What if Ventures, Tintah Grace and Gaingels, as well as all existing investors: Upfront Ventures, BOLD Capital Partners, Revolution VC, and Compound.

Bionaut Labs will use the money to advance clinical development ofits lead programs against malignant glioma brain tumors and Dandy-Walker Syndrome (a rare pediatric neurological disorder). Funds will also support further development of its proprietary Bionaut treatment platform, allowing future expansion of clinical targets and progression through Bionaut’s two accelerated U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designations. Bionaut Labs plans to release major pre-clinical data packages from IDE and IND enabling studies this year, with the goal of initiating human clinical trials in 2024.

The company’s magnetic propulsion-controlled Bionauts (microscale robots) navigate to deep locations in the human body and brain safely and precisely through non-linear 3D trajectories, making Bionaut Labs the first to access the midbrain through previously inaccessible anatomical routes. Bionauts can perform localized treatment, detection and precise medical procedures to deliver outcomes that were previously unattainable. The FDA has granted Bionaut Labs a Humanitarian Use Device designation for BNL-201, a micro-robot design to treat Dandy Walker Malformation, and an Orphan Drug Designation for BNL 101, a drug-device combination for treatment of malignant glioma.

“There has been a dearth of innovation around treatments for conditions that cause tremendous suffering, in large part because past failures have discouraged even the best of researchers,” Bionaut Labs Co-Founder and CEO Michael Shpigelmacher said. “Bionaut Labs remains committed to finding new ways to treat these devastating diseases, which are long overdue for a breakthrough.”
 
Many diseases of the brain and central nervous system are hard to treat because it is difficult to deliver therapeutics beyond the blood-brain barrier and reach deep locations in the midbrain with precision. Through magnetic propulsion, Bionauts can navigate the depths of the human body to deliver drugs locally, generating efficacy and avoiding side effects and toxicity from systemically delivered drugs. By reaching the midbrain safely through novel routes, Bionaut Labs aims to develop solutions to treat the most debilitating conditions including Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease, malignant glioma and hydrocephalus. 

“We are extremely excited about the transformative potential Bionaut presents in treating debilitating neurological disorders,” Khosla Ventures Founder Vinod Khosla said. “Anatomically precise treatment will make traditionally-used methods seem archaic, and Bionaut is at the forefront of this movement.”
 
“Bionaut Labs tackles a complex pharmaceutical problem which many companies have failed to address in the past,” GISEV Family Office Director Giammaria Giuliani stated. “As pioneers of micro-robotics for CNS treatment, the company enjoys a strong first-mover advantage and carries great promise.”
 
As neurodegeneration continues to grow in prevalence in the aging global population, Bionaut Labs offers therapeutic access to the brain and other hard-to-reach locations in the body, diagnosing and treating diseases that were previously unreachable. 
 
Bionaut Labs is developing precision micro-technology to remove the barriers of localized treatment and disease detection. Bionaut Labs is headquartered in Los Angeles, with additional R&D sites in Israel and at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The firm was co-founded by two robotics entrepreneurs—Shpigelmacher and Aviad Maizels—who previously co-founded PrimeSense, the company that developed the facial recognition tech behind iPhone’s FaceID (sold to Apple in 2013 for approximately $400 million). Its leadership and medical team consists of experts across robotics, neuroscience, biology and drug development.