Skip to main content

The Novasign company record

Novasign was founded in August 2019 as a BOKU University spin-off, based in Vienna, Austria.

This page is the company record for an investor, analyst or corporate-development reader doing first-pass diligence, one place that answers what Novasign is, what is proven, how it is funded and what it is looking for.Every figure on it is argued in full elsewhere on this site, and the evidence behind each one is published in the results overview.

Novasign builds one product, Novasign Studio (a browser-based workbench in which a process engineer builds a model of a unit operation from designed experiments and then simulates the runs they were about to book), and licenses it alongside the modelling and implementation work that gets a first model running. The method is hybrid modelling, and what it is and how it works is argued on the hybrid modelling page. The commercial consequence is the subject of this one.

It states no valuation and no terms, and it is not an offer, a solicitation or an invitation to invest.

Book a call with a founder

Investor and corporate-development inquiries reach the founders. Pick a time for a call in the scheduler on this page, or write through the contact page; either way, say who you are and what you are assessing. One founder takes the call. Share nothing confidential in the form or on the call; no non-disclosure agreement is in place at this stage.

Loading available times…

What is on the record about Novasign?

The entity and its people, the product and the method, the science and the case studies, the clients, the funding and the partnership, and the commercial stage.

Founded
August 2019, as a spin-off of BOKU University, Vienna
Legal entity
Novasign GmbH, registered in Vienna, Austria, an EU entity you would contract with directly
People
21 employees, 20 FTE
Product
Novasign Studio, one browser-based platform, not a suite of tools
Method
Hybrid modelling, also called physics-informed AI: mechanistic structure given, kinetics learned
Peer-reviewed publications
Listed with their DOIs on the publications page
Named case studies
Five published with the customer or consortium named, a baseline stated and the outcome quantified
Strategic partner and investor
Repligen (2025). The amount is not disclosed
Non-dilutive public funding
About €3M from the Austrian FFG and aws programs, including a single €1.2M FFG grant
Compliance program
On a dedicated GRC platform since June 2026, covering ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR and the EU AI Act. No certificate or attestation report has been issued
Commercial products manufactured on Novasign
None to date. Every published outcome describes process development, characterization, scale-up or CQA design

Each row is argued in full on its own page, and the links lead there.

Why does hybrid modelling matter commercially?

Bioprocess development is expensive because learning is physical: every question costs a bioreactor run, and a run costs weeks and raw material.

Two established approaches each fail in a way the other cannot fix. Classical design of experiments is statistically sound but treats the vessel as a black box, so it needs a run for every question and cannot extrapolate past the conditions it sampled. Purely data-driven machine learning needs far more runs than a development campaign produces, and its output is a model a regulator cannot inspect, which is a hard limit in an industry that has to justify a process, not merely operate it.

Hybrid modelling gives the model the part that is genuinely known (mass balances, stoichiometry, the streams entering and leaving the vessel) as structure rather than asking it to be learned. The network is left with a low-dimensional rate function. That is why a usable model can come out of a handful of well-designed runs, and why it stays interpretable.

Novasign’s differentiation inside that category is documented rather than asserted: peer-reviewed science behind the method, a partnership with an instrument vendor that puts the modelling next to the hardware generating the data, and four deployment options including on-premise and air-gapped, which is what a regulated manufacturer’s IT function actually requires.

The same process knowledge arrives from fewer physical experiments, and experiments, not software licenses, are where a development budget goes.

What has Novasign actually demonstrated?

Five engagements are published with the customer or consortium named, the baseline stated and the outcome quantified. All five are process development, characterization, scale-up or CQA design work, and a study is published only once the customer has approved the name and the figure.

The most-quoted of the five: 8 runs instead of 22, 64% less experimental effort.

Across programs the reduction runs 35–70% fewer experiments, and the band is the claim rather than its maximum. It depends on the analytical precision available in the customer’s own campaign. The results overview marks which figures are measured and which are estimates.

Novasign works with clients in biopharma, industrial biotech and food technology. One of them is a large multinational pharmaceutical company that has not cleared its name for publication.

How is Novasign funded?

Two sources are on the record: about €3M of non-dilutive public funding, and a strategic partnership with an equity investment from Repligen in 2025.

The non-dilutive funding came from the Austrian FFG and aws programs and includes a single €1.2M FFG grant. Non-dilutive matters twice over for a reader assessing this company: it funded years of method development and the peer-reviewed record without consuming equity, and it is competitively awarded, which makes it third-party validation of the science rather than of the pitch.

The Repligen relationship is a partnership first and an investment second. Repligen is an instrument vendor in bioprocessing, and the commercial logic is that Novasign’s modelling sits next to the hardware and PAT generating the process data, which is also why one of the five case studies exists. The investment amount is not disclosed.

companyFounded, Viennanon-dil fundingResearch labECONTIBiochAIn FFG grantsinvestorRepligen investment2017201820192020202120222023202420252026yearAwards, projects and press by year
  1. The axis runs by year from 2017 to 2026.
  2. Company: Novasign is founded in Vienna in August 2019.
  3. Non-dilutive funding: a research lab spans October 2017 to February 2021.
  4. Non-dilutive funding: ECONTI, an FFG consortium project, spans February 2023 to April 2025.
  5. Non-dilutive funding: BiochAIn, FFG grants behind Novasign Studio, spans March 2023 to June 2026.
  6. Investor: the Repligen investment is marked in July 2025.
The founding, the non-dilutive funding and the Repligen investment, by month.

What is Novasign looking for?

We are seeking Series A growth capital to accelerate the commercial expansion of Novasign Studio. With our technology validated in client projects, we are ready to scale — strengthening our visibility, expanding our customer reach and driving broader adoption.

Alongside our current investor, we aim to bring together venture capital firms, strategic investors with strong commercial networks, and investors from other industries who can help expand Studio into new sectors. We are looking for partners who share our ambition and can help turn proven technology into sustained growth.

What does Novasign not publish here?

Revenue, recurring revenue, valuation, cap table, burn, runway, pipeline and customer contract values are not published on this website.

That is a deliberate line rather than an oversight. Figures of that kind change every quarter, and a page carrying a stale one is worse than a page carrying none. It is the same reasoning that keeps certification target dates off the trust page. Financial and commercial detail belongs in a conversation with a mutual non-disclosure agreement in place.

This page is a record and an introduction. It is not an offer, a solicitation, or an invitation to invest.

How do you reach the right person at Novasign?

Investor and corporate-development inquiries reach the founders through the contact page. Say who you are and what you are assessing, and mark the inquiry as an investor inquiry.

Novasign’s practice is to reply with a call rather than a deck, because the first useful conversation is usually about the science and the deployment model rather than the slides. If what you actually want is to see the product work, a demo reaches a modelling specialist, which is a better use of the time than a corporate overview.

Assessing Novasign? Start with the record, then write to us.