Funding profile · Cancer diagnostics

X-ZELL

One disclosed round, closed in October 2020 at US$4 million after more than two years on the market. Nothing announced since. No SEC Form D exists, and the reason is jurisdictional rather than evasive.

$4.0MSeed+ round as closed, company-reported (Oct 2020)
$3.0MOriginal cap on the same round before the 2020 extension
0SEC Form D filings on record for the company or any vehicle naming it
Oct 2020Last publicly reported financing, almost six years ago

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
2014 Company established in Bangkok Not disclosed Not disclosed YC data
Undated Y Combinator and angels Not disclosed Y Combinator; angels including Paul Buchheit Company-stated
Apr 2020 Investment agreement inside the Seed+ round Undisclosed Essex Bio-Investment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Essex Bio-Technology (SEHK listed) Company and partner
Mid 2018 to Oct 2020 Seed+, described as oversubscribed at close US$4.0M Led by Deutsche Industrieanlagen (DIAG); Essex Bio-Technology; angels from Asia, Europe and the United States Company release
2020 Startup SG award grant prize S$30,000 Enterprise Singapore Independent
2021 to Sep 2026 No financing announced Not applicable Not applicable Not found

What the filings show

SEC EDGAR · Form D search · run Sep 2026

Result
No Form D filed by X-ZELL, X-Zell Inc. or X-ZELL Biotech Pte. Ltd.
Vehicles
No Form D by any pooled investment vehicle naming the company
Why
The operating parent, X-ZELL Biotech Pte. Ltd., is a Singapore company. Regulation D is a United States exemption, so a Singapore round raised outside the US triggers no Form D.
US entity
X-Zell Inc. appears as the applicant on US patent application 20190094115, with a Sunnyvale, California address. No Form D appears under that name either.
Federal grants
No NIH or NSF award to the company found
Reading
Absence of a Form D is not evidence that no money moved

Reading the filings

  1. The round took about 28 months.The company says the Seed+ commenced in mid 2018 and closed in October 2020. That is roughly 28 months for a first institutional round. Rounds that take that long usually reflect a slow build of individual commitments rather than competitive demand, which is consistent with a round the company describes as backed by angels across three continents plus two strategic names.
  2. The extension was defensive, not opportunistic.The round was capped at US$3.0 million and extended to US$4.0 million at the start of 2020, which the company attributed to the effect of COVID-19 on the clinical research landscape. An extra third of capital raised to absorb delay is a different signal from an upsize driven by oversubscription, even though the closing release uses the word oversubscribed.
  3. Four million dollars is very small for what was being promised.The 2020 materials describe pre-development work on breast, ovarian, colon and lung tests feeding into a general population screening test. For scale, Grail has spent orders of magnitude more and, as of October 2025, was still assembling a premarket approval submission for a single multi cancer test. The disclosed capital never matched the stated ambition.
  4. The strategic investor never disclosed a number.Essex Bio-Technology, a Hong Kong listed biopharmaceutical company, joined through a wholly owned subsidiary in April 2020. The amount was undisclosed by both sides, and the size of the stake is not on the public record.
  5. Almost six years of silence on capital, and a different product line at the end of it.Nothing has been announced since October 2020. Over the same period the company moved from a blood test it did not sell to instruments, antibody panels and reagents it does. Selling consumables to laboratories is a lower burn, revenue earlier business than running a screening assay through validation, which is one way a company survives a long gap between rounds.
  6. The public evidence base did not grow with the valuation story.The company still rests on one 2019 peer reviewed prostate paper for the blood test. The announced 400 patient Singapore validation study has no trial registration and no published result. An investor pricing the tCEC programme in 2026 is pricing the same data available in 2019.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
EU regulatory Three effusion cytology panels CE marked under IVDR, announced Apr 30, 2026. Instruments described as CE marked under IVDR and MDR and EUDAMED listed since Mar 2024. Company-stated
US regulatory No 510(k) and no PMA in FDA device databases; no entry found in FDA device registration and listing data. Company says two instruments are FDA listed, which is an administrative step, not a clearance. Public record
Manufacturing ISO 13485 certified reagent manufacturing in Thailand, offered for OEM, private label and tender supply. Company-stated
Reference sites Krankenhaus Nordwest, Augusta Hospital, St. Elisabeth and St. Barbara Halle, Institute of Oncology Ljubljana, Singapore General Hospital, National Cancer Centre Singapore. Company-stated
Routine volume More than 500 Cryoimmunostaining cases signed out at MVZ Main-Taunus, reported by the site pathologist at a November 2025 seminar. Clinician, company-reported
Independent evidence Miceska et al., Acta Cytologica, 2026, preliminary results from the Institute of Oncology Ljubljana. Independent
Blood test X-ZELL Prostate was described in 2020 as on sale in Thailand. It does not appear anywhere on the current website. Differs from 2020 claims

What to watch

  • Any announced financing. The last one closed almost six years ago.
  • Whether Essex Bio-Technology discloses the X-ZELL position in its Hong Kong filings.
  • Revenue disclosure or named paying laboratories for the Cryophore and Cryosuite lines.
  • A registered trial or a published result for the tCEC prostate programme.
  • Whether the Singapore parent or the Thai manufacturing entity becomes the reporting centre of the group.

The X-ZELL story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Delee: Also in Diagnostics. A Monterrey team built a machine that filters circulating tumor cells out of whole blood, published two papers on it, and raised about $2.75 million
  • 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
  • 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
  • Moichor: Also in Diagnostics. An AI-assisted animal blood and cytology lab that started with birds and reptiles and now sells an in-clinic analyzer for dogs and cats

Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR Form D search for X-ZELL and related names: no filing foundSEC · queried Sep 2026
  2. Public recordFDA device 510(k), PMA and registration and listing queries: no matching recordopenFDA · queried Sep 23, 2026
  3. Public recordUS patent application 20190094115, applicant X-Zell Inc., Sunnyvale, CaliforniaUSPTO · published Mar 28, 2019
  4. Public recordAccuracy of Tumour-Associated Circulating Endothelial Cells as a Screening Biomarker for Clinically Significant Prostate CancerCancers · Jul 27, 2019
  5. IndependentThis Startup Is Changing Cancer Detection Around the World (featuring X-ZELL)MedTech Innovator · Dec 2020
  6. IndependentESMO: Grail eyes FDA review with boosted performance data from Galleri cancer blood testFierce Biotech · Oct 20, 2025
  7. InterviewX-ZELL, a scalable way of detecting early-stage cancers in small blood samplesPetaCrunch · Jun 12, 2020
  8. CompanyX-ZELL closes oversubscribed Seed+ roundX-ZELL · Oct 2020
  9. CompanyEssex Bio-Technology joins X-ZELL Seed+ Investment RoundX-ZELL · Apr 2020
  10. CompanyY Combinator company profile for X-ZellY Combinator · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  11. CompanyX-ZELL Cryophore Panels achieve IVDR CE MarkX-ZELL · Apr 30, 2026
  12. CompanyX-ZELL technology now US FDA-listed and IVDR-compliantX-ZELL · Mar 19, 2024
  13. CompanyX-ZELL company website, home, about, technology and publications pagesx-zell.com · accessed Sep 23, 2026

Compiled from SEC, USPTO, FDA and ClinicalTrials.gov public records and published reports as of September 23, 2026. No Regulation D offering notice exists for this company; amounts shown are company-reported and were not filed with a US regulator. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in X-ZELL. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.