The round, led by Inveready with participation from the European Commission’s EIC Fund and the Basque Fund (SPRI Group), takes the total funding raised by the Basque company since its inception to €12.5 million
Derio (Bizkaia, Spain), 22nd October 2026. HAWK Biosystems, a biotechnology company specialising in precision oncology diagnostics and headquartered at the Bizkaia Technology Park, has closed a €3.5 million financing round. The round was led by Inveready, one of Europe’s leading technology venture capital firms, with co-investment from the EIC Fund, the investment fund of the European Innovation Council, and the Basque Fund, the investment vehicle of the Basque Government’s SPRI Group, alongside other investors.
With this round, HAWK has raised approximately €12.5 million in total funding since its foundation and enters a new phase: evolving from a technology provider to the research community and the pharmaceutical industry into a company that is also a clinical diagnostics player, with the launch of its first hospital test planned for 2027.
From commercial launch to doubling sales in a year
HAWK launched its first product range in 2025, after four years of technology development and clinical validation. In its second year on the market, the company expects to close 2026 with revenues of around €1 million, double those of its first commercial year, and currently employs 21 people.
This early traction is supported by a distribution network that already covers more than 30 countries, with customers in markets such as Japan, the United States, Canada and the Netherlands, and which has recently been strengthened with new commercial partners in Spain, Australia and China.
The company also works with several multinational pharmaceutical companies as a companion diagnostics partner in the development of new cancer drugs. This is HAWK’s most strategic business line and the one with the greatest medium- and long-term potential.
Use of proceeds
The €3.5 million will be allocated to three objectives:
- Growing the pharmaceutical business, increasing the number of active programmes and the operational capacity to deliver them.
- Accelerating international expansion, with a focus on the main EU markets and the United States.
- Preparing the move into the clinic: obtaining CE marking under the new European In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR), expected in the second quarter of 2027, and launching its first clinical test in Europe.
What HAWK does: measuring whether drugs have something to act on
HAWK’s platform, QF-Pro®, analyses the tumour biopsies already processed routinely in any pathology department and quantifies something current tests do not capture: whether two key proteins are actually interacting inside the tumour cell, not merely whether they are present.
This information can be decisive in determining which patients will respond to a given treatment. Several targeted drugs and immunotherapies act precisely on these interactions, so measuring them accurately makes it possible to select patients better, reduce ineffective treatments and accelerate the development of new medicines. The technology is not limited to a single target: it can be applied to any clinically relevant protein pair, opening up applications across multiple cancer types and therapies.
First clinical target: immunotherapy in lung cancer
HAWK’s first clinical test will focus on non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer death in Europe. Today, the decision to treat with immunotherapy relies on a test that measures the amount of the PD-L1 protein in the tumour. This criterion excludes a significant share of patients who could benefit from treatment.
QF-Pro® directly measures whether the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway is active. Its clinical validation, published in 2023 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, one of the leading journals in oncology, in a cohort of 237 patients, showed a strong ability to predict which patients respond to immunotherapy, including some that current tests rule out.
A rapidly expanding market
Companion diagnostics is one of the fastest-growing segments of the diagnostics industry: according to MarketsandMarkets, the global market will grow from $6.31 billion in 2026 to $11.57 billion in 2031, at an annual growth rate of close to 13%. This growth is driven by the rise of precision oncology drugs, whose approval increasingly requires a test to identify eligible patients, and by pressure on healthcare systems to direct high-cost therapies to the patients who truly benefit from them.
“This round allows us to take the step from technology company to clinical diagnostics company,” said Fernando Aguirre, CEO of HAWK Biosystems. “We already work with pharmaceutical companies and research centres in more than 30 countries. The challenge now is to bring this measurement capability into hospitals, starting with immunotherapy in lung cancer, and to scale the company from Bizkaia into the major European markets and the United States. Having investors such as Inveready, the EIC Fund and the Basque Fund on board validates that this project can be led from here.”
“HAWK has developed a technology with the potential to address a significant need in oncology: improving the precision with which patients are identified as candidates for specific treatments. The company has already demonstrated its ability to bring its innovation to the international market and to collaborate with the pharmaceutical industry. This funding will strengthen its commercial growth and help it move toward the clinical application of its technology,” said María Poveda, Director at Inveready.
The participation of the EIC Fund and the Basque Fund reflects sustained European and Basque institutional support for deep-tech life sciences innovation in the Basque Country, a region that over the past decade has built a leading biomedical infrastructure and talent base.
About HAWK Biosystems
HAWK Biosystems is a precision diagnostics company founded on research from the Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research UK, headquartered at the Bizkaia Technology Park (Derio, Spain). It develops and commercialises QF-Pro®, a platform for the quantitative measurement of protein–protein interactions in clinical tumour tissue. The company operates in three areas: research, partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry and clinical diagnostics, with a commercial presence in more than 30 countries and a team of 21 people. Its first clinical test, in lung cancer immunotherapy, is expected to launch in Europe in 2027 (CE-IVDR marking), with the United States also in sight.
www.hawkbiosystems.com
Press contact: