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Food Quality Firm Clear Labs Launches With $6.5M Series A Financing

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Food quality firm Clear Labs launched today with a $6.5 million Series A private financing round. 

The Menlo Park, California-based firm also announced the launch of its first product, Clear View, in private beta mode. Founded in 2014, Clear Labs seeks to "index the world's food supply and set worldwide standards for food integrity," it said in a statement. 

Clear View is an analytics platform that combines next-generation sequencing with a big data platform and what the company says is the world's largest molecular food database. The database was built in house during the past 18 months and is used to compare food samples with genomic markers and other metadata to analyze food products against their labels. Clear View tests for ingredient accuracy, including authenticity, genetically modified organisms, bacterial contamination, allergens, nutritional data, and off-label additives, Clear Labs said. 

The Series A financing was led by Khosla Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and strategic investors. The proceeds will go toward increasing Clear Labs' headcount, specifically in technical and product roles, and to launch its technology to pilot customers. 

"For the first time, the food industry can test for complete content accuracy, not just spot check for contamination," Clear Labs CEO and Co-Founder Sasan Amini said in a statement. "By allowing brands to capitalize on the advances in big data and genomics, we're moving beyond food safety, which is largely reactive, and into food quality, which is wholly proactive." 

In addition to Amini, Clear Labs' management team is composed of Mahni Ghorashi, a co-founder and its chief marketing officer, and Cyril Bouteille, its vice president of engineering.