Ahren Innovation Capital has helped bring Zoe’s overall financing to $53m by leading a series B round for the personalised nutrition service.
Zoe, a US-based personalised nutrition services provider co-founded by King’s College London faculty, secured $20m in a series B round yesterday led by Ahren Innovation Capital, the investment firm co-founded by researchers from the Cambridge, UK ecosystem.
Accomplice, THVC and Daphni also took part in the round, as did former American footballers Eli Manning and Ositadimma Umenyiora.
Founded in 2017, Zoe offers an at-home test kit and machine learning technology to understand a consumer’s biological responses to food and provide personalised nutrition advice to improve long-term health.
Zoe also operates a free app, called Zoe Covid Study, in the US, the UK and Sweden to calculate cases of covid in real time, understand symptoms and long-term effects, and track the efficacy of vaccines. The data is available to scientists through a non-profit initiative.
The series B capital will allow Zoe to cope with demand for its offering, including a UK launch this year and additional markets next year. It will also support an ongoing recruitment drive.
The company was co-founded by Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London. It operated in stealth for three years, launching its debut product in September last year.
Zoe had raised $27m in venture funding by March 2020, according to Forbes, and it disclosed in its series B announcement it had now secured $53m altogether. Further details could not be confirmed.
Thierry Heles
Thierry Heles is the editor of Global University Venturing, host of the Beyond the Breakthrough interview podcast and responsible for the monthly GUV Gazette (sign up here for free).
