The most interesting thing Orbem does is also the most unexpected: it uses AI-powered MRI, the same family of technology that images human brains, to determine the sex of a poultry egg, non-invasively, in under a second. The Munich company raised a €55.5 million Series B to scale that, and a good deal more.
The round was led by Innovation Industries, with Supernova Invest plus follow-on from General Catalyst, 83North and others. The underlying idea is that magnetic resonance imaging can be industrialised and pointed at biological materials that can’t be judged from the outside, bringing fast, scalable, non-destructive analysis to agriculture, food production and, eventually, healthcare.
The egg-sexing application sounds like a punchline until you do the math: the system has already scanned more than 170 million eggs, and parts of the EU now restrict the culling of male chicks. Orbem turned an ethics rule into a market.
The poultry case is the proof point. Orbem’s Genus Focus system has scanned over 170 million eggs, offering an alternative to culling male chicks, a practice now restricted in parts of the EU. Where regulation creates a mandate, a company with the only practical compliance technology gets a market handed to it. Orbem has since added a product that assesses egg fertilisation before incubation, letting hatcheries pull non-viable eggs early.
The Series B funds expansion into the United States, more scaling of the poultry business, and a move into fruit and vegetable quality analysis, plus continued work on healthcare applications, which is where the really large opportunity sits if the technology generalises. The risk is focus: a company applying one clever platform to eggs, then produce, then human health is a company that could spread itself thin chasing every adjacent market. But “Munich deep-tech firm industrialises MRI and builds a real business on it” is exactly the kind of patient, science-heavy European company that supposedly can’t get funded here. This one just raised €55.5 million.