Durham, North Carolina-based Ramona Optics, which develops imaging systems for biopharma and biomedical use, has closed an oversubscribed $25 million Series A financing round led by ARCH Venture Partners. Stealthpoint Ventures, ND Capital, Fall Line Capital, Hamamatsu Ventures, Dallas-based Murchison Capital Partners, and New York’s Overlap Holdings also participated. The round is Ramona’s first official capital raise.
“For centuries, microscopes have been designed for the human eye. Our MCAM technology is built for computation – because while seeing is believing, it isn’t quantitative,” said Gregor Horstmeyer, Ramona co-founder and CEO. “Today, advancing drug candidates and making accurate diagnoses requires statistically meaningful data: many measurements, not just one, to make sound decisions. This fundamental shift enables us to use AI to extract insights from massive, high-definition datasets that are simply beyond the reach of human observation.”
Microscopes Built for Computation
Ramona has built multi-camera array microscopes (MCAMs) designed to break the trade-off between field of view and resolution, enabling high-throughput drug discovery experiments. The company has been awarded 29 patents. Its technology is now in more than 50 of the country’s top research labs, spanning academia, government, biotech, and top-25 pharma, and it has supported work in more than 30 peer-reviewed publications.
“Ramona has developed a fundamentally new class of microscopy technology and translated it into commercial systems that are already being adopted by customers in academia and industry,” said Patrick Weiss, venture partner at ARCH Venture Partners and chairman of Ramona’s board. “Its massively parallel imaging and on-the-fly analysis generate the scale and consistency of data required to build AI models on biology that was previously too slow or too costly to observe.”
A Team Rooted in Duke Research
Horstmeyer’s co-founders include Mark Harfouche, PhD, chief technology officer, and Roarke Horstmeyer, PhD, scientific director. Roarke Horstmeyer is an associate professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, where his work combines machine learning, computational microscopy, and signal processing to develop new optical devices. The company has 12 PhD holders on staff, with expertise spanning computational imaging, machine learning, computer architecture, cancer biology, and neuroscience.
About Ramona Optics
Ramona Optics is a Durham, North Carolina-based company that develops imaging systems for biopharma and biomedical use. Its multi-camera array microscopes (MCAMs) are designed to break the trade-off between field of view and resolution, enabling high-throughput drug discovery experiments. They pair massively parallel imaging with on-the-fly analysis to generate data at the scale needed for AI-driven biology. Ramona has been awarded 29 patents, and its technology is used in more than 50 of the country’s top research labs across academia, government, biotech, and top-25 pharma.
