Funding profile · Cancer genomics

Yemaachi Biotechnology

One $3 million seed round, a $1 million fellowship grant, a share of a $25 million cancer award, and no securities filing of any kind. The capital picture here has to be read from announcements and grant records rather than from the SEC.

$3.0MSeed round closed March 2022, led by V8 Capital
$1.0MGates Foundation fellowship grant to the CEO, awarded 2021
$25MCancer Grand Challenges award to Team SAMBAI, 14 institutions, Yemaachi share undisclosed
0Form D filings on record with the SEC

Data as of September 24, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Summer 2021 Y Combinator batch S21 Not disclosed Y Combinator Press
Nov 2021 Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship, to Yaw Bediako $1,000,000 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Independent
Mar 2022 Seed $3,000,000 V8 Capital led; LifeLine Family Heritage Fund, Y Combinator, Tencent, LoftyInc Capital, VestedWorld, V Square Capital, Ethan Perlstein Release and press
Mar 2024 Cancer Grand Challenges award, Team SAMBAI Up to $25,000,000 over five years, 14 institutions Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute Independent
Feb 2025 TACA anchor partnership Not disclosed Roche, via its African Genomics Program Company release
Feb 2026 Series A, in preparation Not disclosed None named Independent

What the filings show

SEC EDGAR · searched September 24, 2026

Form D by the company
None
Form D mentioning the company
None, including pooled vehicles formed to invest in it
Domicile
Ghana. Offices in Accra, Washington DC and Nairobi, company-stated
Other federal records
No NIH award, no NSF award, no FDA submission, no registered trial
What that means
A Form D is filed when securities are sold into the United States under Regulation D. A foreign issuer can take money from US funds under another exemption, or raise entirely outside the US, and file nothing. Absence of a filing is not absence of a round.

Reading the record

  1. There is nothing to read at the SEC.Every dollar traced here came from a press release, an interview or a grant announcement. For a company that lists US investors in its seed round and keeps a Washington DC office, that is worth stating plainly rather than treating the silence as a finding.
  2. The seed was wide for its size.Eight parties are named on a $3.0 million round: one lead and seven others. If V8 Capital took the customary third to half, that is $1.0M to $1.5M, leaving $1.5M to $2.0M split seven ways, roughly $215,000 to $285,000 each. That is angel and micro-fund scale, and it is arithmetic on reported totals, not a filing.
  3. Non-dilutive money outweighs the equity.The Gates fellowship alone, at $1.0M, is a third of the seed. Add an undisclosed Roche contribution and a share of the SAMBAI award. Split evenly across 14 institutions, $25M over five years would be about $1.79M each, roughly $357,000 a year; awards of this kind are not split evenly and Yemaachi has not disclosed its share, so read that only as an order of magnitude.
  4. The $25 million is not the company’s.Headlines paired Yemaachi with the figure. The award went to Team SAMBAI, a 14 institution group led by Melissa B. Davis at Morehouse School of Medicine, with Bediako as one member. The company’s own release says the team “will receive $25M from Cancer Grand Challenges over five years”.
  5. Forty seven months between priced rounds.The seed closed in March 2022 and a Series A was still in preparation when Forbes Africa reported in February 2026. In that window the company installed a NovaSeq X Plus, a PromethION and a 3.2 petabyte storage platform. Either grants, partner funding and service work carried it, or more equity moved than was announced.
  6. The anchor partnership is unpriced.Bediako told GenomeWeb he could not disclose the Roche amount. Since the consortium is the stated commercial route, the price of a consortium seat is the number that would let anyone value the pipeline.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Anchor partner Roche, February 2025, funding and technical support, amount not disclosed Company-stated
Consortium Opened to further pharma partners in February 2025; none named as of September 24, 2026 Not found
Service work Tunisian inflammatory breast cancer samples sequenced at the Accra laboratory under a partnership with Institut Pasteur Tunis, October 2024 Company release
Co-development Bio Usawa, Kigali, October 2025: monoclonal antibodies and companion diagnostics for African populations Partner release
Capacity Illumina NovaSeq X Plus, July 2025, reported as a first for Ghana; Oxford Nanopore PromethION 2 Solo; 3.2 petabyte on-premise platform, December 2025 Independent and vendor
Revenue No revenue figure disclosed at any point Not found
Data access model Free to African-based researchers; pharma partners gain access for drug discovery Company-stated

What to watch

  • A first Form D, if the Series A sells into the US under Regulation D. It would be due within 15 days of the first sale.
  • The Roche figure, or a second consortium member that sets a price for a seat.
  • Whether the Ghanaian entity or a US entity is the one that raises the Series A.
  • Enrolment against the announced 7,500 patients, which is what any buyer of this data is paying for.

The Yemaachi Biotechnology story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Cambridge Cancer Genomics: Also in Diagnostics. A Y Combinator backed British company that used repeat blood draws and machine learning to tell an oncologist when a cancer drug had stopped working
  • Digistain: Also in Diagnostics. A mid-infrared scan of an unstained tumour slice, converted into a recurrence risk score in about an hour
  • Notable Labs: Also in Diagnostics. A blood cancer company that screened drugs against a patient’s own cells to predict who would respond, in-licensed a shelved Boehringer Ingelheim compound, reached
  • Isabl: Also in Diagnostics. A Memorial Sloan Kettering spin out that reads the whole tumor genome and transcriptome instead of a gene panel

Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR Form D search, no filing by or mentioning YemaachiSEC · Sep 24, 2026
  2. Public recordNIH RePORTER, NSF awards, FDA databases and ClinicalTrials.gov, no Yemaachi recordSep 24, 2026
  3. IndependentGhanaian diagnostics startup Yemaachi raises $3m seed roundDisrupt Africa · Mar 25, 2022
  4. IndependentCancer research firm Yemaachi raises $3M in seed fundingPrecision Oncology News · Mar 21, 2022
  5. IndependentYemaachi Biotech and team SAMBAI secure $25 million Cancer Grand Challenges awardBusiness Insider Africa · Mar 7, 2024
  6. IndependentYemaachi, Roche launch African Cancer Atlas initiativeGenomeWeb · Feb 18, 2025
  7. IndependentBiotech bravado: what this entrepreneur is pioneering in AfricaForbes Africa · Feb 27, 2026
  8. CompanyTeam SAMBAI, Yemaachi Biotech, named as recipient of Cancer Grand Challenges awardBusiness Wire · Mar 6, 2024
  9. CompanyYemaachi launches The African Cancer Atlas, in partnership with RocheBusiness Wire · Feb 18, 2025
  10. PartnerBio Usawa and Yemaachi Biotech unite to transform healthcare in AfricaBio Usawa · Oct 30, 2025

Compiled from SEC, NIH, NSF and FDA public records and published reports as of September 24, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; a company that raises outside the United States or under another exemption files none. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Yemaachi Biotechnology. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.