OGI Bio secures £1m investment

Co founded in 2020 by Dr Alex McVey (CEO) and Prof Teuta Pilizota (CSO), OGI Bio secured pre-seed investment from Apollo Informal Investments to revolutionise the way that microbes are grown and managed.

The company's automated device automatically samples, analyses and adjust the microbes’ environment, helping improve processing capability, cost effectiveness and data analytics.

The investment was led by Tricapital, alongside Apollo Informal Investment, Old College Capital, Sapphire Capital Partners in conjunction with Queen’s University Belfast’s QUBIS Innovation Fund, Merleview Capital and Scottish Enterprise.

The money will help OGI Bio establish a new laboratory and manufacturing facility, grow the team, and ramp up sales of the company’s automation systems to the microbiology and biotechnology sectors.

“Our aim is to ultimately have one of our devices on the bench of every microbiologist and biotechnologist, enabling them to innovate more productively, flexibly, and sustainably."

Alex McVey, CEO and co-founder

The research underpinning the development of this device arose from work carried out by Dr Alex McVey and Marijana Krivic as researchers at the UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology, funded by the BBSRC and the Research Councils’ Synthetic Biology for Growth Programme.

Earlier this year OGI Bio received a SMART Scotland grant via Scottish Enterprise, and additional funding from the Higgs Incubation Centre.

OGI Bio was named as semi-finalists for the coveted Converge Award and won an Innovative Company in the recent Scottish Edge IBioIC Awards. They were also one of the 40 companies to benefit from the Scottish Government /Scottish Enterprise Unlocking Ambition Accelerator, which comes with an additional £25k of funding.

“Scotland has a thriving industrial biotechnology sector and many of the innovative companies we invest in are university spinouts just like OGI Bio. We’ve been working with them for a while – through our Unlocking Ambition entrepreneurial development programme and with a range of advisory and grant support – so we’re pleased to be further supporting their ambitious plans for the future through our equity investment, which will lead to increased Scottish manufacturing capability and quality job creation.”

Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship & Investment at Scottish Enterprise