Seattle biotech startup Split Biosciences announced a $7 million Series A on January 26, 2021, led by Bioeconomy Capital, and said it would operate under the name Parse Biosciences. The company presented the financing and name change together: it said its business and technology had grown beyond the original SPLiT-seq method, and that the new name better reflected that evolution.
What Split Biosciences announced
The January 26, 2021 announcement paired a financing milestone with a rebrand. Bioeconomy Capital led the $7 million Series A, with participation from new and existing angel investors. The company said it would use the proceeds to scale commercial rollout of its Whole Transcriptome Kit.
Parse Biosciences co-founder and CTO Charlie Roco said the company had spent three years developing a product intended to be usable by more scientists, and that it had evolved beyond its original SPLiT-seq method. His characterization that the kits operated “at a higher level than anything else” on the market was a company executive’s promotional assessment, not an independently established comparison.
Why the company changed its name
The company described the change as a reflection of its evolution from the original SPLiT-seq method toward a broader business and product direction. It did not announce a new owner or an acquisition as part of the 2021 rebrand.
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The company’s roots were in academic research. GeekWire reported on January 26, 2021, that Split Biosciences spun out of the University of Washington in 2018 and that the technology was developed in Georg Seelig’s lab by Charlie Roco and Alex Rosenberg.
What the Whole Transcriptome Kit was designed to do
Parse described its kit as using combinatorial cDNA barcoding within cells for single-cell RNA sequencing. The company said that approach avoided the need for complex, expensive microfluidic instruments. It also described the product as capable of profiling up to 100,000 cells across up to 48 samples.
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Those are company-described capabilities, not an independent head-to-head assessment or a guarantee that every lab can use the workflow without specialized equipment or expertise. Parse also said samples could be fixed, frozen, and stored, allowing collection and downstream library preparation to take place at different times.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the funding figures say—and what they do not
GeekWire described Split Biosciences in 2021 as a 16-person startup, reported that more than 40 labs were using the kit at the time, and put its total funding at $9 million when equity investments and grants were included. These are contemporaneous figures, not current company metrics.
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Parse had announced more than $2 million in total financing in 2019. In December 2023, the company said it had closed $50 million through a Series C equity raise and debt facility, taking total funding above $100 million. That announcement also described a 34,000-square-foot Seattle headquarters and laboratory.
In October 2025, QIAGEN entered an agreement to acquire Parse Biosciences for approximately $225 million in cash, with possible additional milestone payments for equity holders, according to a QIAGEN filing excerpt. The excerpt establishes an agreement and its stated terms; it does not establish that the acquisition later closed.
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