Lille, July 24, 2025 – CELEOS, a Deeptech / MedTech startup emerging from the Lille ecosystem, announces the closing of its first seed fundraising round of €1.5 million. This strategic operation aims to finalize its integrated real-time surgical guidance device prototype, ready for human testing and designed to improve precision in oncology surgeries.
A structured fundraising round supported by key players
The funding consists of:
- €527,000 in equity,
- €300,000 in convertible bonds via the French Tech Seed program,
- €700,000 in grants and repayable advances.
Investors include Business Angels, SATT Nord, and the Centre Oscar Lambret, which is acquiring a stake in a company for the first time in its history. CELEOS was supported in this operation by Eurasanté, Link Gestion, and Pledge Avocats.
“This funding allows us to reach a key milestone: achieving a functional and integrated prototype, with a view to our clinical validation in the operating room. Our ambition is clear: to offer surgeons a precision tool to improve the chances of recovery for cancer patients”, states Philippe Saudemont, PhD, co-founder and CEO of CELEOS.
A technology born from academic research
Founded in 2023 by Dr. Philippe Saudemont and four partners, CELEOS is the result of over ten years of research conducted at the PRISM laboratory of the University of Lille. The startup is developing a surgical guidance technology using mass spectrometry, capable of identifying the nature of tissues (healthy or cancerous) in a matter of seconds during surgery.
An intelligent surgical co-pilot
The technology, originally named SpiderMass, will take the form of a mobile cart integrating a laser, a mass spectrometer, and artificial intelligence. The laser vaporizes the tissue surface, generating vapors containing a true molecular fingerprint of the tissue. This is analyzed in real-time by AI, which then provides the surgeon with a clear and immediate response to guide their surgical decision.
A major medical and economic challenge
Today, intraoperative analyses take a minimum of 40 minutes, when they can be performed at all, and definitive results can require up to 4 weeks. These delays lead to a surgical reintervention rate of 20 to 45%, with back-and-forth between the operating room and the pathology laboratory, and sometimes the inability to reach a conclusion on samples of limited size.
CELEOS’s solution aims to:
- Reduce intraoperative uncertainties,
- Decrease relapses and complementary treatments,
- Optimize hospital resources,
- Relieve pathology laboratories.
To learn more about CELEOS and follow the project’s progress, visit https://www.celeos.ai and our LinkedIn page.