In January 2026, the Munich-based DeepTech pioneer Orbem successfully closed a €55.5 million ($60.3M) Series B funding round. The investment was led by Dutch deep-tech investor Innovation Industries, with participation from Supernova Invest and follow-on support from existing backers General Catalyst, 83North, and The Venture Collective.
The company is led by Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Pedro Gómez, alongside Co-Founders Dr. Miguel Molina and Dr. Maria Laparidou. Orbem is industrializing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) by combining high-speed sensors with “Vertical AI” to enable non-invasive, sub-second analysis of biological materials—starting with the sexing of poultry embryos inside the egg.
The global food system is under immense pressure to eliminate waste and meet new animal welfare mandates. Orbem addresses this by replacing destructive testing with autonomous MRI scanning, allowing hatcheries to identify male chicks before they hatch. This high-velocity sensing of physical assets provides a level of situational awareness similar to autonomous drone orchestration in precision agriculture.
The new capital will fuel Orbem’s expansion into the United States and accelerate its entry into the produce and human healthcare sectors. By revealing “hidden data” within biological systems, Orbem provides an architectural visibility similar to AI observability platforms, transforming opaque physical processes into actionable digital intelligence.
Market Signal
- The “Speed-of-Light” MRI Alpha: Orbem’s €55.5M round validates that MRI is no longer a slow clinical bottleneck. By achieving sub-second scans without humans-in-the-loop, the company has created a proprietary biological dataset that is currently the largest of its kind, serving as a massive moat against optical-only competitors.
- Ethical Efficiency as a Moat: As EU bans on male chick culling intensify, Orbem’s Genus Focus system has become a mission-critical utility for global hatcheries, having already scanned over 170 million eggs. This “Compliance-as-a-Service” model is a powerful revenue driver that aligns ESG mandates with bottom-line profitability.
- Platform-Grade Scalability: From poultry to avocados and eventually human health, Orbem is building a “Universal Sensor” for the physical world. This ability to generalize MRI logic across different organic materials is why Innovation Industries led the round, betting on Orbem to become the default “Internal Eye” for the 2026 bio-economy.
Key Details
- Company: Orbem (Orbem GmbH)
- Funding: €55.5M Series B
- Headquarters: Munich, Germany
- Lead Investor: Innovation Industries
- CEO: Dr. Pedro Gómez
- Use Case: Industrial MRI for non-invasive egg sexing, produce quality analysis, and automated biological sensing
