A Gadget That Detects Gluten? With $4 Million in Funding, This Startup Is Working on It. The year-old company is working to develop a portable gluten detecting sensor.
By Nina Zipkin
6SensorLabs is on a mission to help people with food allergies worry less when they go out to eat. And it just got a bit closer to that goal.
The San Francisco-based company raised $4 million in seed funding this week from Upfront Ventures, Lemnos Labs, SK Ventures, SoftTech VC, Mitch Kapor and Xandex Investments.
Founded by CEO Shireen Yates and CTO Scott Sundvor, the company has been hard at work developing a portable sensor that will identify gluten in food (we wrote about them here back in July). Yates says the funding will be used to optimize technology and launch the final product. The company hopes to bring the sensor to market in early 2015.
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The sensor is still in development, and so far there are no firm details on its pricepoint, but the goal is for it to be marketed for affordable and personal use. There will also be an accompanying mobile app where users can report the results of the testing as well as share their restaurant experiences to help others who are avoiding gluten for health reasons.
The company is starting with gluten, but plans to expand to other allergens.
