iPremom, a Valencia-based prenatal diagnostics company, announced September 2, 2026, that it secured €15 million in seed funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Asabys, marking what the firm described as the largest early-stage maternal health investment for a European startup. The company has developed a blood test that predicts preeclampsia risk as early as nine weeks into pregnancy, validated across nearly 10,000 pregnancies in Spain according to company claims reported by La Vanguardia.
The test enters a prenatal care landscape where hypertensive disorders, including preeclampsia, rank among the leading causes of maternal deaths worldwide. More than 700 women die daily from preventable pregnancy and childbirth complications, according to 2023 data published in a 2025 World Health Organization report. Standard first-trimester screening in Europe currently requires a complex combination of maternal health factors, blood pressure readings, Doppler ultrasound imaging, and protein biomarker analysis. iPremom's approach relies instead on cell-free RNA extracted from a single blood draw.
The company completed a prospective multicenter study in Spain, known as the PREMOM cohort, that demonstrated what it says are promising sensitivity and specificity rates for early-pregnancy screening using cfRNA signatures. That work is expected to contribute to a Nature Communications paper anticipated for publication in late 2025 with iPremom employees among the listed authors. The commercial product, branded MaiRa Preeclampsia Test, uses proprietary predictive models to flag elevated risk before symptoms appear.
Cofounder Carlos Simón, a physician and PhD who spent 25 years as scientific director at Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad, cofounded Igenomix, a genetic testing company that EQT sold to Vitrolife in 2021 for €1.25 billion, according to La Vanguardia. Tamara Garrido, who holds a doctorate from Universitat de València and worked at both IVI and INCLIVA, serves as scientific director, according to her profile at Fundación Carlos Simón. Guillermo Ferrando leads the commercial organization as CEO.
Guillem Masferrer, the Asabys partner who led the investment, told La Vanguardia the firm intends "to equip the company to launch the product commercially, with a pilot in Spain, and develop other tests for the platform." iPremom aims to expand its pipeline beyond preeclampsia into gestational diabetes, preterm birth risk, and fetal growth restriction, according to coverage of the announcement.
Founded in 2019, iPremom has received backing from multiple sources. The European Innovation Council's Accelerator program provided €2.5 million in early 2026, Valencia Plaza reported that February. Additional support came from ERDF/IVACE+i, the Valencian Innovation Agency, and ICEX Invest in Spain, the company's website shows. LinkedIn lists the team size in a range between 11 and 50 employees, though such figures can lag actual headcount.
iPremom faces competition on both sides of the Atlantic. California-based Mirvie developed a cfRNA blood test for preeclampsia validated at 17.5 to 22 weeks gestational age, publishing clinical data in Nature in 2022 and announcing follow-up results in February 2025. iPremom positions its test for earlier use, beginning at week nine of pregnancy. Sera Prognostics offers PreTRM, a maternal serum biomarker test for preterm birth risk, operating in an adjacent segment of prenatal risk stratification.
The European Commission's CORDIS fact sheet for iPremom's EIC-funded project outlines two potential paths to market: a centralized lab service delivered through technology transfer, and a decentralized kit paired with software as a medical device for laboratories equipped with next-generation sequencing capacity. The company has not disclosed timelines for CE-marking approval or broader commercial availability.
Asabys, based in Barcelona, manages the €180 million Sabadell Asabys Health Innovation Investments II fund, which reached final close in 2024 with Banco Sabadell as anchor investor, according to ASEBIO. Amadeus Capital Partners, a UK firm focused on deep tech and health tech, invests across stages from seed through growth.
"Pregnancy complications have been underdiagnosed and undertreated for generations because we were looking in the wrong place and at the wrong time," Simón told La Vanguardia. The company declined to disclose its post-money valuation or whether other investors participated beyond the two co-leads. Whether iPremom's earlier detection window translates into measurably better outcomes for mothers and infants will depend on clinical adoption and real-world data collection in the years ahead.
