Hormone testing usually means a clinic appointment and a wait. Unravel Health has raised €2.96M to put the measurement in a palm-sized device instead.
Conduit EIS Impact Fund and Wrightwood led the round, roughly £2.5M, with Leo Capital, Embryo Ventures, Hermesa and others joining. The London startup is building the Micro Lab, which reads several hormones from a saliva sample within minutes.
Its first market is women tracking their cycles, where hormone levels shift daily and a single blood draw tells a patient little. Saliva testing has been offered before, but accuracy, logistics and clinician trust have held it back.
Daily data instead of snapshots
The ambition is that repeated at-home readings produce a trend rather than a data point, giving users and their doctors something closer to a continuous picture of ovulation, perimenopause and thyroid-adjacent changes. Devices sold directly to consumers face a familiar question, though, of whether a home reading changes a clinical decision.
The regulatory path is likely to be light if the product is marketed as wellness rather than diagnosis, and correspondingly heavier if Unravel Health pursues claims that guide treatment. Femtech companies have repeatedly discovered that distinction late.
Femtech moves past cycle tracking
Investors have been arguing for a year that the sector needs to grow beyond fertility apps. Hormone diagnostics, menopause care and cardiovascular research specific to women have all drawn capital as the category matures.
Hardware is a costly business, though. Devices need manufacturing partners, replacement units, and a support operation for users who cannot get a reading.
Unravel Health will spend the money on development and validation of the Micro Lab, with a commercial launch still ahead.
