Spore.Bio’s technology can detect bacteria in 10 minutes: Amine Raji, Co-founder & CEO, Spore.Bio

0:00Amine Raji:Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. Today I'm joined by Amine. Amine is the co-founder and CEO of SporeBio, which is one of Europe's most exciting deep tech companies at the moment. It's an AI-driven microbiology platform and it's made a lot of noise, raised lots of money, and today they have some very, very exciting news. Amine, take it away. hey seb thank you so much for having me i'm amin co-founder and CEO of sport bio and today we're announcing the launch and the validation of our proprietary technology tmsi to the whole world which is the first ever technology that can detect quantify and identify bacteria in 10 minutes without culture without enrichment using our ai native platform amazing and how can you give it more flavor like how different is this how revolutionary is this in the world of microbiology yeah imagine um i mean there are plenty of use cases in the industry in the clinical field where you need to detect bacteria to make sure that someone is not sick to detect bacteria in a drug or a food product today the process is so long so complex and so painful for all those stakeholders you need to take your sample, incubate it, you know, in a petri dish.

1:19This is this really old technology where you have to grow bacteria. It's taking from 2 to 14 days. And then when it's grown, you have to isolate it, do an identification with genome sequencing or malditov, with like complex technologies that are extremely expensive, extremely hard to find, to do the identification. Basically, at SporeBio, we bridge the gap with one system, one technology, one foundation model that is trained on millions of different events, bacteria, yeast, and molds. You just put your sample, you put it in the system, and in 10 minutes, you have a result that is as reliable as the traditional method.

1:56We really expect this to be a true, true revolution in the field of biology and to unlock so many use cases and making sure that every product that is being put on the market is not contaminated anymore with E. coli, salmonella listeria you name it and how did you get to this point you know at what point what's the journey that you've been on that has led to this breakthrough yeah i mean uh i lived myself in my previous job i was working for nestle the food and beverage giant lived this pain uh first first hand uh with lots of microbiology uh struggles this was a major topic for nestle was using the petri dish that you know has been invented in the 19th century in 1889 i was like how come we're in 2023 and we're still using this technology and have to wait days to know if a product is contaminated or not and so i decided to leave nestle i met two my two co-founders maxim who's a phdn postdoc from institute pastor and muhammad who's a successful exit entrepreneur in France.

3:06And together, we started iterating and iterating and iterating. And I think that's what kind of made us special. For a deep tech company, you know how long those cycles are. We're doing hardware, we're doing bio, we're doing ML. This is so complex and can take decades, you know. And for us, we decided to do it kind of the aggressive and veloce way, taking way more risks, shipping extremely fast, taking decisions that retrospectively were completely crazy. But I think those bets were the interesting one and that LOS is only three years after incorporation to deploy a technology that today delivers value in the field that has been validated in only three years, which is the first ever time it happens in the history of microbiology.

3:58Amine Raji:Amazing and what's next then like how do you then you know I know that you're announcing it in Denver today but then what comes after this you have to focus on commercialization is there a lot of testing like how do you take a breakthrough like this and get it out into the world as quickly as possible. yeah so we're indeed announcing it in denver but it's a global launch we're announcing it in paris in wiesbaden in germany and in denver right now so my team is all scattered all around the world in all industry events and now i mean since the beginning of sport bio every manufacturer i've been meeting was extremely excited about this technology but you know we were just a young startup with a kind of an immature technology and could not really scale it and we always had way more commercial traction than what we could deliver.

4:46Now, it's not the case anymore. And we can start debottlenecking our delivery and start scaling this technology. So we have two main objectives right now. One is to ship, ship, ship, and to have thousands of machines in the coming months deployed in all factories all around the world. But the second thing is we founded this technology that was a huge leap of faith. We didn't know if it was working. Now we see it's working in this first huge use case. And we believe that this can really change the world in lots of different applications, especially in the clinical field and in vitro diagnostics.

5:21And so we're gonna double down on R &D right now, Seb, build way more use cases, applications to really show the world how this new technology, TMSI, can definitely change things.

5:34Amine Raji:And what kind of timelines do you think that you're gonna be working towards when it comes to a product like this? Deep tech is traditionally such longer timelines in terms of hitting commercialization and scale. You've had a breakthrough relatively early on. It feels like in the career of sport buyer, you're only a few years old to have a breakthrough of this size. When you look forward for 5, 10, 20 years, what does the rest of the journey look like? Is there a lot more R &D to do? Is there more commercialization? How quickly can you move in this field?

6:11Using this technology, we believe there is kind of a multi-trillion dollar market that is accessible from clinical diagnostics, from environmental monitoring, from in vitro diagnostics. basically whatever metabolite that you need to detect today you need to culture to enrich to multiply the gna etc we believe that we have built the first ever technology that is sensitive enough combined with a foundation model that can pre-train on anything and today we're training on bacteria but tomorrow it can be on i don't know chemical contaminants on a gna sequence on any type of target metabolites and basically be able to find the needle in a biological haystack in any sample, any product, any application.

7:05That's going to take years. We started with one really strong use case that is a really sensitive one, microbiology testing. We expect that in the next five years, we become the leader. We become the world first technology used as kind of a gold standard in any food and beverage, pharma, cosmetic environment that needs to make sure that their products is not contaminated. But for us, that's really, it's only day one. There are so many different applications every day. I had to learn to say no to any new application, you know, to keep our focus. But now with all the additional resources that we have, I mean, in only three years, we're a team of 60 people based in Paris, based in France, scaling really, really hard and growing extremely quick.

7:48Now we're hungry for more and we're really working on taking over this whole market.

7:54Amine Raji:Amazing. And given these results, are you thinking about fundraising at all? I mean, I know that you raised$23 million last year, but now are you thinking, you know, it's been a year later, we've got these amazing results. We have this opportunity to go after this trillion dollar market. is now the time to go back to market raise more money and and really accelerate uh that's a really good question sam uh we i mean with all the milestones that we've been hitting recently you can imagine that we started to had lots of uh um inbounds and uh interest um uh which is an amazing thing our focus right now i mean we have way more enough bandwidth to kind of deliver.

8:34That's our focus right now. And yeah, obviously, depending on the opportunities and with our crazy ambitions, at some point it's going to happen. We don't know exactly when. And what's really important for us is to find the right partner for this next phase. I think we're kind of a strange animal in the field of tech, kind of a deep tech company with really, really, really strong scientific roots, but at the same time with an ambition, a velocity, an aggressivity that you don't kind of commonly find in deep tech. And so that requires having investors on our side that understand it, that understand that it's a huge roller coaster and that allow us to take all those risks.

9:17So that's, I guess, what's going to be my focus for the next round.

9:21Amine Raji:And what was it like raising the first two rounds? I think you raised a pre-seed and then a Series A. Was it a seed or Series A? But I think you raised$35 million across a couple of rounds. What was it like raising those early rounds? this is a complex subject matter because you kind of talk you are a bit of a unique company in many ways what was the investor reaction like when you were pitching this? Depends some of them kind of didn't know how to put us in a box and you know I remember first reactions I mean you want to do hardware you want to do bio you want to do machine learning I mean it's impossible you're gonna get lost and the more we're talking to people the more we're finding some amazing people that were like wow that could actually be huge that's obviously a huge leap of faith that's extremely hard to build but we believe in this we believe in your mission I lived a really strong personal pain point link to my topic and so I think every people that knows me know that I'm on a mission I'm driven and I'm not gonna stop until I solve this this pain point and yeah we're lucky to find some amazing people.

10:29I think you know Julia Hawkins from Local Globe, which was actually the first investor that believed in us. And those complexities, what makes us unique was actually a strength for her. And we're like, okay, if this works out well, this is a huge moat, a really strong defensibility, and we can take over the whole market. And I know, Seb, I love your content and you're always pushing on how European companies can go global and become leaders. Microblogy, this huge$50 billion market, is a European-dominated market. The science has been invented in France by Louis Pasteur. The biggest leaders are French companies from K40 or like BioMario, et cetera.

11:19We have Institut Pasteur, that is the leading academic research center in the world. it should be us it should be a european company that go take over this this huge market with the aggressivity and the ambition that we usually find in in american companies so that's what

11:38Amine Raji:we're trying to do at sport by love it that's exactly what we love to hear it's amazing and you know you're in denver you're announcing this all over the world today what is the what does globalization international expansion look like for you you know how do you take this everywhere all at once? Yeah, I mean, today our machine is already deployed in three different continents. I mean, we have Prospect contacting us from Asia, from Africa, from really all around the world. We're really focusing on two markets, Europe and the US, and our customers are leading S &P 500, Fortune 500 companies that have factories all around the world.

12:17So we need to be global since day one. That's why our R &D center, our HQ is still in Paris. That's the best place in the world to have the talents, the academic know-how, years of building in the field of micropology, in the field of machine learning. So that's where we build the technology. And then a few months ago, we recently opened our US office that I'm leading in New York to go expand this US market where we see the biggest traction that we're having. And we did that super early in the story of SportBion. I think that was definitely the right move. And now I'm in Denver, I've been talking with my co-blogist for the last two days.

12:58I see how this is important here to penetrate the US market and why this was a good move.

13:03Amine Raji:Amazing. And how are you feeling about the big reveal in Denver in an hour, hour and a half? Man, it feels good. I mean, imagine three years of sleepless nights, of working really, really hard, of generating lots of data, of doubting, etc. For this specific moment, where you can finally show the world that you build something that is groundbreaking, that is recognized, that have met the validation data to start being deployed all around the world. That feels super good. And I'm thinking a lot about the team. I mean, we have a really passionate mission-driven team that has put their blood, sweat and tears into making this happen.

13:47And so I'm thinking a lot of them today.

13:51Amine Raji:Amazing. It must be an amazing feeling for the team. I want to ask about the machines themselves. Can you give any sort of flavors to what these things are? You know, like, you know, I read that these are like big machines that you put in factories, manufacturers, whatever. What does it look like? For somebody who's new to this world entirely, what does a machine like this look like? How does it actually work? What do you do with it? What do you get out? Can you walk through a bit of that? Yeah. You have to imagine that any machine to detect bacteria is those big machines where you're going to enrich culture, really complex setups to go find the needle in the haystack.

14:28So to find the bacteria in a complex product. For us, it's a completely different technology that is based on light, on photonics, which is actually something where Europe is extremely strong. I'm sure you heard about some photonics ships companies, about some biophotonics companies raising massive rounds in Europe. And that's something where we're actually really, really good. And so this machine basically shines light on a sample in a really specific way and gather a unique spectral signature about any bacteria, yeast and mold that you can have in your sample. The machine itself is extremely small, can be put anywhere in a factory, is extremely easy to use.

15:09You said you could use it, put your sample and have a result really fast. And then behind, there's this huge machine learning model with actually a GPU inside the machine where inference is being done locally to be able to, the model has been trained on millions of events and gathering this unique spectral signature, doing the inference, comparing it with the training data set. that's how we can have this result in only 10 minutes which makes it a super interesting use case and for the first time kind of an AI that is not just a productivity tool, a chatbot or whatever it's actually an AI embedded in a machine, in a factory that gives a huge, huge, huge advantage to our customer which makes it super interesting.

15:53Amine Raji:I mean it's an amazing use case of AI I think this is where we're going to see the real value is leveraging AI to really transform technologies that you wouldn't even know about, you know, like you and like for people like me who are not in this world or not in this industry, probably wouldn't even be aware that this is a problem that needed solving. And now it could be, you know, you think of the productivity gains from going from five days to 10 minutes. It's huge. It's truly extraordinary. And like for people who need this technology, that's going to drive massive gains for their business. I really love what you just said.

16:25And I'm always telling my team, if we do our work well, our customers don't even know that there is an AI behind it. And I love that because the problem that we've been solving for the last three years, it's been 200 years that people have tried to solve it. And today, thanks to AI, we had the breakthroughs that was made possible to be able to finally have a technology that can detect bacteria in only 10 minutes

16:51Amine Raji:without culture, without enrichment. So I love this philosophy of having AI that is so useful on the back, but that you don't even see on the front. amazing well i mean thank you so much for joining me congratulations again best of luck with the announcement i'm sure you're going to make a wave um but yeah congratulations again it's amazing thank you so much it was a real pleasure talking to you