Tasso Raises $100 Million in Series B Funding

Tasso Inc. is $100 million richer these days, thanks to support from 10 investors.

RA Capital Management led the latest oversubscribed Series B financing round, which raises the company’s total funding to $131 million. New investors included D.E. Shaw group, Senvest, InCube, and SVB Innovation Fund, and existing investors Foresite Capital, Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures, J2V, Cedars-Sinai, and Merck GHIF also provided support.

“Tasso is poised to transform the traditional blood collection process and quickly modernize the standard of care for at-home diagnostic services. We are thrilled to partner with Tasso’s talented team of entrepreneurs to help expand access to this essential technology,” said Anurag Kondapalli, principal at RA Capital. As part of the investment round, Tasso provided Kondapalli with a seat on the company’s Board of Directors.
 
Tasso will use the Series B money to scale manufacturing and operations to meet increased demand for its signature line of blood collection devices and decentralized health testing services. Tasso’s products are currently being used for various pharmaceutical, research, and healthcare applications worldwide. The devices enable users with a simple method for collection of clinical quality blood at any convenient time or location, eliminating the burden of clinic appointments while increasing access to remote populations. The combination of Tasso’s virtually painless blood collection technology with an integrated logistics platform provides pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and payers with unprecedented access to actionable health data. 
 
“With the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a fundamental shift in how we think about healthcare, and demand for patient-centric, in-home solutions is greater than ever,” said Ben Casavant, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Tasso. “Today, Tasso devices are successfully supporting decentralized clinical trials, clinical research, and remote patient health monitoring. This funding round validates the success of our efforts to date and will increase streamlined access to home diagnostics for everyone in the future.”
 
Tasso’s devices enable simple, convenient, and virtually painless blood collection for users. Headquartered in Seattle, Tasso is privately held and funded by grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the National Institutes of Health, with support from various investors (previously mentioned), and by co-development deals with various industry leaders.