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Countable Labs has raised $26m to advance the development and commercialisation activities for its single-molecule polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology.
The California-based company’s financing round was led by ARCH Venture Partners, with additional participation from F-Prime Capital and Primer Ventures.
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Countable Labs’ lead product, Countable PCR, is designed for application in areas including minimal residual disease (MRD) testing, cell and gene therapy (CGT), and biomarker validation.
Providing capabilities including molecular linkage, a way to understand patterns of heredity and regions of the genome associated with diseases, the tool is designed to aid laboratories in detecting rare events, fusions, and markers of genome integrity across a broad range of sample inputs.
By directly counting individual DNA molecules without relying on standard curves, Countable Labs claims the technology is “at least 10 times” more sensitive than conventional PCR.
Countable Labs CEO Giovanna Prout said: “This financing gives us the resources to ensure every laboratory that could benefit from a more sensitive genomics measurement solution.”
Countable Labs’ latest funding follows its receipt of a European CE mark for Countable PCR in March 2026. Alongside the completed financing round, the company has also appointed Christopher Citraro, who previously held roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Life Technologies and Agena Biosciences, as its new vice president of global sales.
Citraro commented: “The future of genomic testing requires technologies that are simple, sensitive, and inexpensive, helping to democratise access to genomic diagnostics, and high-volume genome-based clinical and industrial testing.
“Countable PCR is exactly that, a technological step change that bridges the gap between complex digital PCR and the discoveries of next-generation sequencing, delivering clear, unambiguous results at scale.”
The MRD testing space’s advance
While MRD testing is not the sole application of Countable Labs PCR technology, it is poised to enter this space at a time when it is growing more competitive, having gained the attention of large players in the diagnostics space. Countable’s financing round follows Roche subsidiary Foundation Medicine’s $595m buyout of Saga Diagnostics in April 2026 to bolster its MRD test provision. At the time, Foundation’s CEO, Dan Malarek, touted MRD tests as “one of the fastest-growing areas within diagnostics”.
Other players in this space include Natera, which was the first company to bring an MRD test to market, and Guardant Health.
According to a report by GlobalData, the cancer diagnostics sector is projected to reach a value of $3.1bn in 2030.
