ZAGENO, a Cambridge-based e-commerce marketplace for the life sciences, announced this week it raised $60 million of fresh funding. The round was co-led by VC heavyweight General Catalyst and an unnamed “large, vertically integrated, nonprofit healthcare organization,” according to a press release.
Like all e-commerce marketplaces, ZAGENO allows its users to easily search, compare and purchase the products they need. In this case, though, the products are things like chemicals, gene sequencing kits and an assortment of lab equipment — products that must meet very specific requirements.
“ZAGENO is laser-focused on the needs of the scientist. We make their jobs more impactful through a more effortless purchasing experience,” co-founder and CEO Florian Wegener told Built In via email. “In science, there are simply no half measures.”
And Wegener would know. Before launching this startup, he was a cardiologist for two years at the University Hospital of Frankfurt, and then went on to work as an executive at biotech company QAIGEN. He says he views ZAGENO as an “enabler of researchers” — a way to fuel future “scientific breakthroughs” regarding illnesses like tuberculosis, cancer and AIDS.
To date, the startup has raised about $88 million total in venture funding, the most recent round of which was a $20 million round also led by General Catalyst back in 2019.
Now, ZAGENO will use this fresh $60 million to continue developing its platform and customer experience, which means it will be growing its development and engineering teams, Wegener said. To that end, the company has dozens of open tech positions available now at its Cambridge headquarters and offices around the world.
