Samplix raises €25M first close led by WLan to scale Xdrop

Danish antibody discovery company Samplix has closed a €25 million first tranche of a financing led by WLan, the investment vehicle of former Evotec CEO Werner Lanthaler, to push its Xdrop platform into more drug discovery labs.

The terms of the Samplix €25M first close

Samplix, based in Birkerød north of Copenhagen, announced the first closing on October 27, 2026, according to the company’s press release. The headline figure has two parts. €3 million is new capital, and €22 million comes from converting convertible bonds held by existing shareholders into equity, according to the same release. The round stays open with a target of €30 million in total, as Startup Rise reported on October 28, 2026.

WLan led the financing through WLanholding GmbH, and all major existing shareholders took part, the company said. Lanthaler, founder and managing director of WLan, is expected to join the Samplix board within the next year. “We believe Samplix is well positioned to become a category leader,” he said in the release.

CEO Henrik Pfundheller called the deal “a further validation of the value our Xdrop platform brings to the antibody discovery community.” The money will expand commercial adoption of Xdrop and strengthen the balance sheet, per the release, and deepen partnerships with biopharma and academic groups, per Startup Rise.

Fresh cash makes up €3 million of the headline, while existing shareholders converted €22 million of bonds into equity, according to the release.

How Xdrop links an antibody to its cell and its sequence

Xdrop places single cells in double-emulsion droplets that run on standard flow cytometers and cell sorters, according to Startup Researcher. Labs can screen for function at high throughput, including assays on membrane proteins and reporter cells, while keeping the link between an antibody’s activity, the cell that secreted it and its sequence. The platform also preserves native heavy and light chain pairing, the same outlet notes.

The company has traveled some distance to get here. Under the EU’s Horizon 2020 SME Instrument, Samplix received €1.87 million for its IMPACT project between May 2019 and April 2021, according to CORDIS. At the time, Xdrop was pitched for isolating single DNA molecules from tiny samples such as tumor biopsies before sequencing. The move into antibody discovery points the same droplet chemistry at drug discovery teams.

Antibody discovery market size and growth to 2030

The antibody discovery market is worth $1.90 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $3.54 billion by 2030, a 13.3% compound annual growth rate, according to MarketsandMarkets (September 2025). North America is the largest region in that report. A longer forecast from ResearchAndMarkets puts the market at $2.4 billion in 2025 and $6.6 billion by 2035, a 10.5% CAGR (October 2025).

For a tools maker in Denmark, that geography is the hard part. Many of the biggest buyers of discovery services and instruments sit across the Atlantic, so a commercial push means winning customers far from home.

Where Samplix sits among October’s biotech rounds

October has been busy for European life sciences in our biotech and pharma funding records. OMass Therapeutics raised a $310 million Series C led by Bain Capital Life Sciences, Forbion and Novo Holdings on October 15, 2026. Sensible Biotechnologies closed a $47 million Series A led by Oxford Science Enterprises on October 6, 2026. ALLOX raised a $10.5 million seed led by Asabys Partners on October 29, 2026.

Therapeutics companies take the large tickets. A former Evotec chief executive on the board brings years of drug discovery partnering, the exact market Samplix sells into. In Europe, we have long been good at building clever lab tools. How many of them stall because the sales engine arrives after the cash runs low?

What to watch as Samplix moves toward €30M

Three markers matter over the next twelve months. The first is the remaining €5 million needed to reach the €30 million target. The second is Lanthaler’s arrival on the board. The third is named biopharma partnerships, which would show Xdrop moving from early adopters into routine discovery workflows.

A Danish droplet platform backed by an operator who ran one of Europe’s best-known drug discovery companies is a story worth following. The next update on the €30 million target will show how much of that backing turns into new money.

Follow the company on its Samplix startup profile and track every European round on the Sesamers fundraising data desk.