Swedish Startup Cytely Secures €3M to Accelerate Lab Research with AI-Powered Microscopy Platform

Funding Breakthrough for Smart Microscopy

Swedish DeepTech startup Cytely has reportedly secured €3 million in new funding to expand its innovative microscopy platform that transforms standard laboratory microscopes into real-time data analysis engines. According to reports, the Lund-based company’s technology significantly reduces the time scientists spend on manual analysis while improving data quality and statistical robustness.

Funding Breakthrough for Smart Microscopy
Investment Backing and European Context
Transforming Scientific Workflows
Real-World Impact and Efficiency Gains
Technical Innovation and Accessibility
Future Development and Industry Position

Investment Backing and European Context

The funding round was led by Ugly Duckling Ventures with continued participation from existing investor Icebreaker.vc, sources indicate. This investment appears to fit within a broader European DeepTech and HealthTech funding pattern observed in 2025, with analysts suggesting a shared focus on automation, precision imaging, and data-centric research infrastructure across the continent.

“Their vision is truly transformative. We’re thrilled to lead this round and support the mission to make smart, data-centric microscopy accessible to every lab,” said Louise Lachmann, Partner at Ugly Duckling Ventures, according to the funding announcement.

Transforming Scientific Workflows

Cytely’s platform addresses what co-founder and CEO Philip Nordenfelt describes as a fundamental constraint in current scientific practice. “Scientists have been constrained by workflows built for images, not data,” Nordenfelt stated in the report. “Cytely transforms any microscope into a real-time measurement instrument, closing the loop from acquisition to decision on an experiment-day timescale rather than a grant cycle.”

The company’s mission, according to sources, is to make every experiment analysis-ready from creation, enabling discoveries to accumulate and scientific knowledge to compound more rapidly.

Real-World Impact and Efficiency Gains

Early adoption at major research institutions demonstrates significant practical benefits. At Lund University, researchers studying herpesvirus latency reportedly progressed from processing just 0.1% of sample data manually to analyzing nearly 100% using Cytely’s platform. The report states this enabled identification of a previously unobservable cell-line defense mechanism and allowed researchers to achieve more progress in one month than in the previous five years.

In commercial applications, the impact appears equally substantial. According to case studies mentioned in the announcement:

A cancer research lab reduced manual analysis time by 75%, saving approximately €300,000 annually
A nanowire BioTech company increased R&D throughput by 40%, estimating $1 million in additional annual value
Another laboratory completely replaced a €400,000 high-throughput imaging setup with Cytely’s pipeline on existing microscopes

Technical Innovation and Accessibility

Traditional microscopy has typically revolved around static images requiring manual cell assessment – a process that can take weeks and often fails to produce statistically confident data. Cytely’s approach makes data, rather than pictures, the primary outcome, according to the company’s description of its technology.

The platform reportedly automates image acquisition, quantifies entire samples, and delivers standardized, reproducible results in real time. Importantly, the software is hardware-agnostic, designed to work with most modern microscopes, which analysts suggest could democratize access to advanced research capabilities.

Future Development and Industry Position

The newly secured funding will support development of intelligent acquisition tools compatible with all microscope brands and create simplified workflows accessible to researchers regardless of their data analysis expertise. These enhancements aim to evolve the platform into a fully integrated discovery network where validated protocols and datasets can be shared and iterated upon.

Dr. Vinay Swaminathan, Head of the Laboratory of Cell & Molecular Mechanobiology at Lund University, characterized the technology as “a democratizing force in science” that “decouples world-class discovery from world-class funding,” according to the report.

Founded in 2023, Cytely maintains team members in Lund, San Diego, and Singapore, and is part of the portfolio at SmiLe Venture Hub. The company’s technology is currently being used across multiple biomedical research fields including virology, oncology, and metabolic diseases.