Funding Round and Expansion
Vivodyne has secured $40 million in Series A funding to advance its human tissue-based drug development platform. The investment will support the expansion of its robotics and AI-powered preclinical testing infrastructure, including a new 23,000-square-foot automated lab at Genesis Marina in South San Francisco. The facility is designed to meet growing demand for human-relevant preclinical data from pharmaceutical companies seeking alternatives to animal testing.
The funding round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Lingotto Investment Management, Helena Capital, Fortius Ventures, and returning investors including Kairos Ventures, CS Ventures, Bison Ventures, and MBX Capital.
A Shift Away from Animal Testing
Animal models have long served as the standard in preclinical R&D, yet nearly 95% of therapies that succeed in animals fail during human clinical trials. Vivodyne’s approach bypasses this limitation by using lab-grown, fully functional human tissues for drug testing. These tissues, grown and analyzed using a fully robotic workflow, replicate the complexity of human biology more accurately than animal systems.
Vivodyne’s platform enables pharmaceutical companies to test therapies on a wide array of engineered human tissues—before entering clinical trials—offering more predictive insights into efficacy, toxicity, and disease mechanisms.
Technology and Platform Capabilities
Vivodyne’s platform integrates robotics and AI to grow and test over 100,000 distinct human tissues within a two-week cycle. The system generates high-resolution multi-omic data, including imaging, single-cell transcriptomics, and proteomics, across more than 10,000 tissue samples per robotic run. Each tissue construct is significantly larger and more complex than standard organoids, enabling detailed functional analysis of drug responses.
This enables preclinical drug development workflows—from target identification to safety profiling—to be conducted using exclusively human-derived models.
Commercial Impact and Industry Adoption
Vivodyne’s technology is already in use by many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Its platform supports development across therapeutic modalities, including:
- Small molecules
- Biologics and antibody-drug conjugates
- mRNA-based lipid nanoparticles
- Cell therapies
The tissues model over 20 different human types—such as liver, lung, bone marrow, lymph nodes, and placenta—and can be adapted to simulate diseases including cancer, fibrosis, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases.
By removing the need for animal optimization, Vivodyne aims to de-risk early-stage drug development and reduce late-stage trial failures, while also aligning with recent FDA and NIH shifts toward human-specific testing protocols.
Executive Commentary and Strategic Outlook
CEO and co-founder Dr. Andrei Georgescu stated, “We are addressing a fundamental inefficiency in the drug discovery process. Our goal is to ensure therapies are optimized for human biology before entering trials, improving the odds of clinical success.”
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, added, “Vivodyne’s ability to produce large volumes of high-quality human data before clinical trials is a foundational shift for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Ileana Pirozzi of Lingotto Investment Management noted the platform’s adaptability: “With AI-assisted learning across diverse human tissue models, Vivodyne has positioned itself as a dynamic engine for therapeutic innovation and patient stratification.”
About Vivodyne
Vivodyne is a biotechnology company replacing traditional animal models with a robotics- and AI-driven platform that grows and analyzes thousands of functional human tissues for preclinical drug development. The Philadelphia- and South San Francisco-based firm generates multi-omic human data at scale to improve drug candidate selection, reduce clinical trial risk, and accelerate discovery timelines. Already trusted by major pharmaceutical companies, Vivodyne is transforming preclinical research by offering an alternative that is more predictive, ethical, and scalable than animal testing.
For more information check out their website.
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