Cobalt Light Systems acquired by Agilent for £40m

Early-stage investor Rainbow Seed Fund has announced that Oxfordshire-based Cobalt Light Systems, a provider of highly differentiated Raman spectroscopic instruments, has been acquired by Agilent Technologies.

Cobalt Light Systems, a spin-out from the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory which was funded from the earliest stages by Rainbow Seed Fund, produces innovative products for non-invasive, through-barrier chemical analysis, for applications in airport security, hazardous chemical ID and pharmaceutical QC, using a technologically advanced Raman spectroscopy technique.
 
Cobalt Light Systems’s CEO Paul Loeffen will remain with Agilent as the director of Raman Spectroscopy. The former Cobalt Light Systems HQ, on the rapidly growing Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire UK, will become Agilent’s global centre for Raman spectroscopy.
 
Privately held and ranked as one of the UK’s fastest-growing technology companies in 2014, Cobalt Light Systems’s customers include 21 of the world’s 25 largest pharmaceutical companies, the US Food and Drug Administration, and more than 75 airports across Europe and Asia-Pacific, including eight of the 10 largest European airports, with over 500 devices deployed at airport checkpoints. Recently, Cobalt Light Systems has entered environmental screening markets such as law enforcement, customs and borders, and first responders its handheld platform.