Watchmaker Genomics raises $40M in Series A

BOULDER — As the life sciences industry in the area continues to bloom, Watchmaker Genomics Inc., one of the newer companies in the region has completed a Series A funding round as it prepares to ramp up its research and development capabilities and expand its workforce.

Watchmaker Genomics closed its $40 million Series A this month, bringing its fundraising total to $53.5 million since its founding in 2019. The round was led by Decheng Capital with co-investment from Eclipse Ventures.

Watchmaker develops reagents that are used in genetic testing, primarily for cancer tumor profiling. They are also used in testing inherited and infectious diseases. The company launched its first product in 2020 and has since become profitable, with 175% year-over-year revenue growth. 

Watchmaker CEO Trey Foskett told BizWest that the company’s founders had various backgrounds in genetic engineering, manufacturing, computational biology and more. They all participated in early research of the tools and technologies that Watchmaker now uses, and they shared a vision for how those could be practically used.

“Now we see that research translate into true clinical applications,” Foskett said. “These markets have gotten very large over the past 10 to 15 years. The diversity of applications has just blossomed.”

Foskett said Watchmaker will use the capital it raised in the Series A to expand its commercial channels and manufacturing capacity while developing new products for clinical sequencing applications, such as single-cell analysis, epigenetics and cell-free DNA. 

The company will also accelerate its workforce growth, Foskett said. Watchmaker started with three employees. It now has about 90, with plans to expand to 150 by the end of the year. 

Foskett said Watchmaker is thrilled to be at the heart of the explosion of the Boulder life sciences industry. Watchmaker is located in Flatiron Park, the life sciences campus that sold for $625 million in April, the richest real estate transaction in Colorado history. The buyer, BioMed Realty LLC, is the largest private life sciences real estate company in the county. 

“It’s a nice tie-in with the investment we’re making in ourselves,” Foskett said. “Nationally, from a life sciences perspective, there’s a lot of capital coming into the Front Range. We’re right in the bullseye for that thesis. We want to see a critical mass of life sciences companies here.”

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