Orbem, the Munich-based DeepTech company turning Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) into an AI-powered tool to reveal hidden insights in food and biology, today announced the closing of a €55.5 million Series B round to expand into the US, launch new solutions for the poultry industry, and enter the multi-billion-dollar fruit and vegetable market.
The round is led by Innovation Industries and joined by Supernova Invest, with follow-on participation from existing investors General Catalyst, 83North, The Venture Collective, Possible Ventures, and several angel investors.
Dr Pedro Gómez, co-founder and CEO of Orbem, says: “We’re the first and so far only company in the world to demonstrate the use of MRI in less than one second and without humans in the loop. We began by showing the poultry industry what’s possible when you can see inside an egg, and we are just getting started.”
Across 2025, analysis shows steady but generally smaller funding rounds for European DeepTech companies working on AI-driven imaging, inspection, and sensing technologies adjacent to Orbem’s space.
France-based TiHive raised €8 million to scale its terahertz- and AI-powered non-destructive quality-control systems for industrial production lines, while Paris-based Chipiron secured €14.9 million in a Series A to develop a miniaturised MRI scanner aimed at making magnetic resonance imaging more accessible in clinical settings. In the Netherlands, QDI Systems obtained up to €7.5 million in investment and EIC support to advance quantum-dot-based X-ray and SWIR imaging technologies for medical and industrial applications.
Together, these rounds amount to approximately €30 million, highlighting a consistent flow of capital into European AI and imaging DeepTech, albeit at a lower scale than Orbem’s newly announced €55.5 million Series B.
Seen in this context, Orbem’s raise stands out both for its size and for its commercial maturity, supporting expansion into the US and the rollout of AI-powered MRI solutions across poultry, fruit and vegetable quality assessment, and longer-term healthcare applications.
While peers such as Chipiron focus on next-generation MRI hardware and others like TiHive and QDI Systems target inspection and sensing niches, Orbem’s funding reflects investor confidence in the industrial deployment of MRI at scale and the value of its growing biological dataset, positioning the company at the upper end of European DeepTech funding activity in this sector during the 2025/2026 period.
“This new funding allows us to accelerate our US expansion and help more food producers and healthcare providers make better decisions with data. Our scalable platform and our rapidly growing, proprietary biological dataset are the perfect basis for achieving this. We are proud to see the trust our investors have placed in us and our vision to help the world see from the inside out,” adds Dr Gómez.
Founded in 2019, Orbem uses AI to industrialide MRI, enabling non-invasive insight into everything from fruits to eggs to the human body. By providing previously inaccessible information – the sex of an embryo inside an egg, the health of a seed, the quality of an avocado without cutting it open – Orbem serves global customers across agriculture, food, and health.
By doing so, the company is building what is becoming the industry’s largest and most comprehensive biological dataset.
Its flagship product, the Genus Focus, reportedly uses AI-powered MRI to see inside a poultry egg, non-invasively determining its sex in less than one second. This provides an animal-friendly and efficient alternative to the culling of male chicks, a practice now banned in several EU countries.
With over 170 million eggs scanned to date, Orbem is scaling rapidly, ready to meet increasing global demand spurred by initiatives like the new ‘Hatch Check’ certification in the US.
Pleuni Hooijman, Investment Manager at Innovation Industries, states: “Orbem is truly exceptional. Few companies manage to make such complex technology accessible and scalable across so many industries. With its platform, Orbem is already transforming entire sectors, and we are very pleased to join them on this journey.“
Building on their success, Orbem recently launched the Genus Scale, a product that sees inside eggs to check their fertilisation status before incubation. This allows hatcheries to stop wasting valuable incubator space on non-viable eggs, repurposing them for the food industry, creating new revenue streams, and fighting food waste.
Michaël Thomas, Investment Director at Supernova Invest, adds: “We’re thrilled to join forces with Orbem, a visionary company that perfectly embodies Europe’s DeepTech excellence. By combining cutting-edge AI and MRI technologies, Orbem delivers concrete answers to some of the major challenges of our time, from reducing animal suffering to fighting food waste and building a more sustainable global food system. This investment illustrates our conviction that Europe can lead in physical AI, transforming scientific breakthroughs into meaningful industrial innovation.”
The Series B funding will accelerate Orbem’s mission to solve global challenges by revealing what we can’t see on the outside of food and biology. Key initiatives include:
- US Market Entry: After establishing its first US office in Houston, Texas, in 2025, Orbem is bringing its poultry solutions to one of the world’s largest agricultural markets.
- Expanded Poultry Platform: Orbem will continue to strengthen its commitment to the poultry industry, scaling its existing solutions.
- New Vertical: The company is expanding its actionable intelligence for sustainable food production into the fruit and vegetable sector. Orbem’s non-destructive technology can see inside produce like watermelons, avocados and mangoes to spot internal defects and assess quality without cutting them open. This helps producers to sort goods with precision, ensure consistent quality, and dramatically reduce food waste before products reach the consumer.
- Healthcare: What Orbem learns from scanning millions of eggs and avocados translates to a deeper understanding of biology. The company is building the world’s largest biological dataset. This unique asset is the foundation for AI models that could have applications in human health, making non-invasive insights more accessible.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/01/from-eggs-to-avocados-germanys-orbem-raises-e55-5-million-for-ai-powered-mri-expansion/
