Samplix Just Raised $27M—Here's What It Means for Antibody Discovery

Jan de Vries · 2026-10-28

Samplix, a Danish biotech company, just announced a first closing of its financing round. The headline number? About $27 million. And it's a deal worth paying attention to if you follow drug discovery or European startup news. Here's the breakdown: roughly $3.2 million in new capital and $23.8 million in shareholder convertible bonds. The round was led by WLanholding GmbH, a privately owned European investment firm, with all major shareholders chipping in. It's still open to additional investors, with a total target of about $32.5 million. ### Why This Round Matters Money is only half the story. The other half is who's writing the check. Dr. Werner Lanthaler, founder and Managing Director of WLan and former CEO of Evotec, is joining Samplix's Board of Directors within the next year. That's a serious vote of confidence from someone who knows the biotech world inside and out. "We are excited to partner with Samplix at this pivotal stage of its growth," Lanthaler said. "The team has built a differentiated single-cell technology platform that solves real, persistent challenges in drug discovery." He went on to say he believes Samplix is well positioned to become a category leader. That's not throwaway praise—it's a signal about where the company could go. ### The Tech Behind the Hype So what does Samplix actually do? Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Birkerød, the company develops droplet microfluidics technology for functional single-cell analysis. Its core product is the Xdrop platform. Think of it this way: Xdrop wraps individual living cells and assay reagents in millions of tiny double-emulsion droplets. Each droplet becomes a miniature, self-contained reaction vessel. Researchers can then watch how cells behave—at massive scale. The clever part? These droplets work with standard flow cytometry and cell-sorting equipment. No need for specialized, expensive instrumentation. That's a big deal for labs that want high-throughput results without rebuilding their entire setup. ### Where the Platform Fits The Xdrop platform is used across antibody discovery, immunotherapy, cell line development, genomic editing, and other functional single-cell research. Both biopharma companies and academic institutions around the world rely on it. One of the toughest problems in early-stage drug development is screening cells against hard-to-target proteins—especially those embedded in cell membranes. Samplix says its platform is built to tackle exactly that kind of challenge. > "This investment is a further validation of the value our Xdrop platform brings to the antibody discovery community," said Dr. Henrik Pfundheller, CEO of Samplix. "We are now in a strong position to further scale our platform, deepen our partnerships with biopharma and academia, and continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible in single-cell workflows." ### What Happens Next Samplix plans to use the new capital to strengthen its balance sheet and broaden commercial adoption of Xdrop, especially in antibody discovery. The company also sees a growing opportunity in AI-driven drug discovery, where large volumes of functional, cell-level data are needed to train predictive models. That's a smart bet. AI models are only as good as the data feeding them, and Samplix is sitting on a technology that generates exactly the kind of high-quality, functional data those models need. For anyone watching the European startup scene—or the future of drug discovery—this is a company to keep on your radar. The round isn't closed yet, and the next few months could bring even more momentum.