Zinc Backs Anemo Labs to Build the Future of Medical Olfaction

Zinc is proud to share our investment in Anemo Labs, an exciting new healthtech company developing AI-powered “electronic dog’s nose” to transform early disease detection. Led by founder Koye Sodipo, Anemo Labs is building a new diagnostic modality with the potential to fundamentally shift how and when diseases are identified.

Digitising smell to transform early detection

Anemo Labs is tackling a huge and complex challenge that until now has remained technologically beyond reach: digitising the sense of smell. While imaging has revolutionised what we can see inside the body, our ability to detect chemical signals – the earliest and often most revealing biomarkers of disease – has remained limited. Smell contains a goldmine of biological information, but there has been no practical, scalable way to capture and interpret it.

Anemo Labs is on a mission to change that by developing a handheld electronic nose that can analyse the chemical composition of air or bodily samples in under a minute. Coupled with advanced AI models capable of understanding and classifying these signals, the company is creating an entirely new approach to early diagnostics. Their long-term ambition is to make medical olfaction as commonplace in clinical pathways as blood tests or stethoscopes, eventually bringing this capability directly into the home.

Why now is the time for Medical Olfaction

Healthcare systems across the world are under increasing pressure to detect disease earlier, treat it more effectively, and reduce the heavy burden of late-stage care. Early-stage diagnosis dramatically improves outcomes, yet most diseases are still identified only once symptoms become visible or severe. Traditional imaging tools, while powerful, cannot be deployed frequently or cheaply enough to support continuous monitoring or for population-wide early screening.

At the same time, technological capabilities have reached a critical inflection point. Advances in electronics, nanomaterials and AI make it possible for the first time to build sensors that can reliably detect and interpret complex scent signatures. The convergence of these innovations means that medical olfaction is no longer a speculative vision, it is an emerging category with the potential for enormous global impact.

Building the data engine and device

In under a year, Anemo Labs has already made significant progress towards its ambitious vision. The team has built the infrastructure to capture and label hundreds of smell samples each day, allowing them to train their AI models at speed. They are now translating this data advantage into a hardware prototype, an electronic device designed to be portable, fast and clinically usable.

Two UK-based trials are planned for the year ahead, spanning both clinical and non-clinical environments. These will be critical in demonstrating the repeatability and real-world performance of the device. Prostate cancer has been chosen as the company’s first clinical focus due to the well-known limitations of current screening tests and the clear need for earlier detection. From there, the technology has the potential to quickly expand into other cancers and diseases that emit detectable chemical biomarkers.

The team behind the big vision

Repeat founder Koye Sodipo brings a rare combination of deep technical expertise and personal conviction. His journey started with computer vision research, later transitioning into consulting and product leadership, most recently at Microsoft. This unique blend of skills gives him the ability to manage complex moving parts across software, AI and business. And his motivation is rooted in his own lived experiences: a seven-year battle with a jaw tumour that highlighted the urgency of improving early diagnostics and sparked the initial idea for Anemo Labs.

Koye is joined by specialists who bring critical scientific and engineering capability. The company’s electronics lead, Dr. Matas Petreikis, has a strong track record of building novel healthcare sensors, while their synthetic chemistry expert, Dr. Molly Parry, enables rapid prototyping of new sensor materials. Together, the team has the multidisciplinary strength that this kind of frontier technology demands.

A pathway to significant commercial and health impact

The market potential for medical olfaction is enormous. From clinical diagnostics to at-home wellness tracking, the ability to detect disease earlier, more affordably and more frequently could reshape entire care pathways. Earlier diagnosis reduces treatment intensity, improves survival rates, and lowers costs for healthcare systems. It also empowers individuals with insights into their health long before symptoms appear.

Beyond prostate cancer, the underlying technology could be applied to a wide range of diseases – from tuberculosis to pancreatic and lung cancers – creating impact both in high-resource health systems and in global health settings where fast, low-cost diagnostics are urgently needed.

The journey ahead

Over the next year, Anemo Labs will focus on advancing its prototype, scaling its data collection capabilities, and deepening partnerships across clinical and research environments. Their goal is to place the electronic nose into external hands within twelve months, a key milestone on the road to regulatory approval and commercial deployment.

Backing innovation in diagnostics 

Zinc’s investment in Anemo Labs reflects our commitment to supporting mission-driven founders tackling the world’s most pressing unmet health needs. Anemo Labs’ mission aligns directly with our focus on deep-tech solutions that shift healthcare from reactive to preventative, and on backing exceptional founders unlocking entirely new categories of impact.

We believe Medical Olfaction has the potential to become one of the most significant innovations of the next decade – and that Anemo Labs is the team positioned to lead the field. We’re proud to partner with them on this journey and excited to help realise a future in which early disease detection becomes the standard, not the exception.

As the Anemo Labs team continues to progress at an impressive pace they are always keen to hear from potential partners who share their vision for a new generation of early diagnostics. You can connect with the team at: hello@anemolabs.com or on LinkedIn.