GenePlanet attracts Lauxera Capital as BlackPeak partially exits — Slovenian genomics platform targets unicorn status
In 2008, a biotechnology student at the University of Ljubljana won first prize at the MIT International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition for a synthetic biology approach against HIV-1. Instead of pursuing an academic career, Marko Bitenc founded a company. Eighteen years later, that company — GenePlanet — operates in more than 50 countries, runs a pan-European laboratory network, and has just attracted a new investor that could accelerate its path to becoming one of Europe’s first genomics unicorns.
Lauxera Capital Partners, a specialist healthtech investor based in Paris and San Francisco managing over $1 billion in assets, has acquired a strategic stake in GenePlanet. Alongside the transaction, BlackPeak Capital, which has been GenePlanet’s growth partner since 2023, has partially exited its investment — crystallising value created over three years while retaining a meaningful shareholding and continuing to support the company.
Three years of transformation under BlackPeak
When BlackPeak Capital invested in GenePlanet in 2023 — a €20 million Series B alongside Darwin AG, Designed Impact Ventures, Fidelity, and Kolektor Ventures — the company was active in 24 countries with a single centralised laboratory in Zagreb, Croatia, and a nascent line of proprietary tests.
Three years later, the transformation has been substantial. GenePlanet’s global footprint has more than doubled to 50+ markets across Europe, Asia, Latin and Central America, and Africa. Four strategic acquisitions have been integrated — including New Era Genetics, Hungary’s leading NIPT (non-invasive prenatal testing) provider, acquired from the Vascular Group — expanding the company’s technology, licences, geographic reach, and talent base. The Zagreb laboratory remains the central hub but is now part of a certified pan-European laboratory platform with additional sequencing facilities in Sweden (Gothenburg), Hungary (Budapest), and Serbia (Belgrade).
The company has grown to 168 employees and now offers a comprehensive portfolio spanning two product pillars: Lifestyle Genetics (home DNA tests including Premium, MyLifestyle, MyHealth, MyAncestry) and Medical Diagnostics (NIPT, Cancer Screen, VeniSafe, and the recently launched MyMeds pharmacogenomics test developed entirely by its in-house R&D team).
The founder: from MIT iGEM to unicorn ambitions
Won 1st prize at MIT iGEM competition in Health & Medicine with a novel synthetic biology approach against HIV-1. Attended Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program (2010).
Won MEDy Most Disruptive Company of the Year at Exponential Medicine, San Diego. Also co-founded Universal Diagnostics in 2012 — developing early cancer detection through blood tests. Co-founder alongside Nina Šterk.
Bitenc’s trajectory from student founder to CEO of a 50-country genomics platform is one of the more remarkable founder stories in Central European tech. He started GenePlanet at 22, during his master’s studies, after winning an MIT competition for work on HIV-1 — and never looked back. The parallel founding of Universal Diagnostics (cancer screening via liquid biopsy) in 2012 shows a founder who has consistently bet on genomics as a platform technology, not just a single product category.
His comment on the Lauxera investment is characteristically direct:
“Now there is a real chance to become a unicorn.”
— Marko Bitenc, Founder, GenePlanet
Why Lauxera: diagnostics expertise and US market access
Lauxera Capital Partners is not a generalist healthtech fund. Founded in 2020 and managing over $1 billion in assets, the firm invests exclusively in healthtech — diagnostics, medical technology, and life sciences — with 14 portfolio companies and offices in both Paris and San Francisco. The firm’s dual footprint is the strategic point: Lauxera brings direct access to the US market, where reimbursement approvals and regulatory pathways are the critical bottleneck for European diagnostics companies seeking to scale globally.
“We believe Europe’s next generation of sequencing infrastructure will be built by companies like GenePlanet — ones that combine scientific excellence, business acumen, and entrepreneurial drive to deliver the benefits of genomic-based personalized medicine to patients across the continent.”
— Victor Decrion, Managing Partner, Lauxera Capital Partners
With Lauxera’s support, GenePlanet aims to broaden its proprietary genetic testing portfolio into oncology and rare-disease panels — two of the highest-value and fastest-growing segments in the diagnostics market — and to accelerate its expansion into high-value Western European and US markets, including fast-tracking regulatory approvals and reimbursement access.
BlackPeak’s partial exit: a model for SEE venture capital
BlackPeak Capital’s partial realisation is worth examining as a case study in Southeast European venture capital. The firm, established in 2014, targets growth equity investments of €5–20 million in fast-growing companies across Southeast and Central Europe, backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), the EBRD, the IFC, and the European Union’s Equity Facility for Growth.
The GenePlanet investment was made in 2023, when the company was still primarily a regional genetic-services provider. Three years later, BlackPeak is crystallising part of the value created — four acquisitions, a 2× geographic expansion, a pan-European lab network, and proprietary product launches — while retaining a meaningful shareholding for the next phase.
“When we first invested in GenePlanet, we backed Marko’s conviction that a founder-led, product-driven genetics company from Central Europe could build a truly international platform. Three years later, that conviction has been validated.”
— Niklas Pichler, Managing Partner, BlackPeak Capital
The transaction structure — partial exit plus continued shareholding plus incoming specialist investor — is designed to support aggressive organic growth, continued geographic expansion, and further bolt-on acquisitions, as GenePlanet targets a full liquidity event for early investors within three to five years.
Slovenia’s quiet genomics champion
GenePlanet is one of the most significant companies to emerge from Slovenia’s startup ecosystem — a country that has produced a growing number of internationally competitive technology companies in recent years, from PODIM-stage startups to scale-ups operating across dozens of markets. The company was a finalist for Slovenian Startup of the Year in its founding year of 2008 and has since grown into the country’s most prominent life sciences export.
For a founder who started with a biology competition win and a conviction about preventive genomics, and who is now running a 168-person, 50-country operation with unicorn ambitions, the trajectory captures something important about what Central European founders can build when they think globally from day one. As Bitenc himself says: the chance to become a unicorn is now real.
0 comments