Research infrastructure · Lab operations
Quartzy
Software that tells a lab what it already has, wired to a marketplace that sells it what it does not. Fifteen years on, Quartzy has given up the free model it was built on and taken $23 million from lenders.
A wall of Post-It notes
Johnny Farnen, the laboratory lead technician at Bellevue University in Nebraska, was running his lab on outdated Excel spreadsheets, a wall of Post-It notes, emails, and four cabinets of paperwork dating back thirty years. Bio-IT World told that story in July 2018, after he found Quartzy and started using software that then cost him nothing. By his count it saved $10,000 in compliance and maintenance costs, $4,800 on consumables in one month, and cut his ordering time from 20 hours a week to 2.
That account reached the reporter through the company, and it should be read that way. But it names the thing Quartzy was built for. A research lab is a small warehouse staffed by people trained to do something else.
The problem is boring, and it is everywhere
Inventory is the least glamorous problem in science and one of the most expensive. Nature devoted a 2015 feature to it, noting that the right system saves time, money and frustration. Most labs still pick the spreadsheet. The other half of the problem is purchasing: an order passes through a requester, an approver, a purchasing system, a supplier and a receiving dock, and every handoff is a place for it to stall. Quartzy attacked both halves with one idea. Give the software away, learn what every lab is about to buy, and sell it to them.
Two researchers tired of the stockroom
Jayant Kulkarni and Adam Regelmann met doing research at Columbia University. Kulkarni holds a doctorate; Regelmann is an MD-PhD who, by the company’s own account, bypassed gastroenterology to start the business. VentureBeat reported in 2013 that the pair were frustrated by disorganization, poor communication, and endless administrative tasks at their lab, and that Quartzy was born in 2009. Wikipedia dates the founding to 2011, the 2013 Form D gives a Delaware incorporation year of 2010, and Y Combinator lists the company in its Summer 2011 batch. Nobody has reconciled the four dates in public.
Software company becomes distributor
For six years Quartzy was free software with a referral business attached. In February 2018 it launched the Quartzy Shop, and by July it had opened a one million cubic foot warehouse in Hayward and pushed the catalog past three million items. It had become a distributor that happened to own the requisition screen.
The filings track the move: Palo Alto on the 2013 and 2016 Form D filings, Hayward on the 2019 one. By September 2020 the company claimed more than 400,000 researchers and over 25,000 organizations, with named customers including Beyond Meat, Gilead and AbbVie.
The price of free
On January 11, 2023, Adam Regelmann published a post announcing that from July 1 every customer would pay an annual subscription, academic, government and non-profit labs included. Existing labs would pay $99 per user seat per year, new ones $149. A five person lab would owe $495 a year.
The post did not dodge the history. It set out the old promise and retired it. Academic users were not persuaded. Reddit threads in early 2023 filled with lab managers pricing out 35 seat labs, and a thread archived in 2025 shows users who left and users who stayed and resent the way the Shop’s own listings surface first in search. Regelmann answered several of those posts under his own name.
Three years later the model appears to have held. In April 2026 the company announced $23 million from Avenue Capital Group and BroadOak Capital Partners, with Spinta Capital as placement agent and DLA Piper advising the lenders. No Form D for that money had appeared on EDGAR as of September 22, 2026, which is what one would expect if it is debt rather than equity.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Equity raised | Three Form D filings under CIK 0001579981. June 2013: $6,665,198 sold of $6,665,203 offered, 17 investors. January 2016: $15,800,733 of $17,556,608, 12 investors. December 2019: $4,999,998 of $5,999,997, 1 investor. Total sold on file: $27,465,929. | Public record |
| April 2026 financing | $23 million from Avenue Capital Group and BroadOak Capital Partners, announced April 13, 2026 and reported that week by FinSMEs, Ventureburn and Pulse 2.0. The release says DLA Piper advised the lenders. No Form D on file for it. | Independent |
| The free promise | A January 2017 company post ended with the line “We’re free and always will be.” In July 2018 the CEO told Bio-IT World the software was free and the transaction earned the money. On January 11, 2023 the company announced a subscription for every customer, writing that it is “no longer sustainable for us to keep Quartzy free.” | Company claim reversed |
| How many customers | The April 2026 coverage says the platform is used by “more than 3,000 organizations.” The company tour page says “over 28,000 biotech, pharma, and academic labs,” and the Shop page invites visitors to “Join over 425,000 scientists.” | Figures disagree |
| Founding date | 2009 per VentureBeat and PitchBook. 2010 per the incorporation year on the 2013 Form D. 2011 per Wikipedia, Bio-IT World and the Y Combinator batch. | Sources disagree |
| Catalog scale | Company pages give 10 million products and 1,800 brands; the April 2026 releases give more than 1,000 suppliers. No independent audit exists. | Company-stated |
| Where you can buy | Purchasing through the Shop is United States only. Users in the EU reported in 2025 that they still see listings they cannot order. | User reports |
| Regulated products | No FDA 510(k), PMA, registered trial, NIH award or NSF award found under the company name. None would be expected for this business. | Public record |
| Peer-reviewed literature | No published study of the platform found. The one PubMed hit from a company record pull is a 2016 atherosclerosis paper with an author listed as Regelmann AG, which nothing in the record ties to the company. | Not found |
| Layoffs | No reported reduction in force found in press coverage or layoff trackers. | Not found |
Read plainly: a durable operating business with an unusually well documented change of heart. The marketplace paid for the software for a while, and when it stopped paying the company charged the users it had promised never to charge. Nothing suggests the platform failed. What the record shows is published customer counts that vary by a factor of nine depending on the page, and new capital arriving through lenders rather than a priced equity round.
What to watch
- Whether a Form D appears for the April 2026 money. Its absence points to debt, which means covenants and a repayment schedule.
- Renewal rates after the subscription conversion. Three years in, no churn figure has been published.
- Whether the 3,000 organization figure and the 28,000 lab figure ever get defined against each other.
- Whether purchasing opens outside the United States, the obvious unexploited half of the user base.
- Board composition in any future filing. Elad Gil appears as a director in 2016 and not in 2019; Adam Bain appears in 2019 and not before.
In their words
“I would like scientists to be able to spend every dollar they have on actual experiments, not on lab management software”
Adam Regelmann, co-founder, to VentureBeat, 2013 · Independent
“After our Series A, we were aggressively focused on driving up demand and getting labs to start using Quartzy. With this new round, we are now turning our attention to building up the supply-side.”
Jayant Kulkarni, co-founder and CEO, to TechCrunch, 2016 · Independent
“The software is completely free to use; we make money when labs buy their supplies from us”
Jayant Kulkarni, to Bio-IT World, 2018 · Independent
“We did say that, and at the time we truly believed that it was possible to keep Quartzy running on the lab supply e-commerce business alone. We were wrong.”
Adam Regelmann, company blog, January 2023 · Company
“We used to use Quartzy until they backpedaled on their promise to be free to academic users. They lost a lot of goodwill”
Lab user, r/labrats thread, archived 2025 · User report
“When a reagent doesn’t show up, research stops.”
Jayant Kulkarni, April 2026 financing release · Company release
“The company has established a powerful position within the procurement of life sciences research tools, and it adds significant value to thousands of research labs and their suppliers”
Bill Snider, Partner, BroadOak Capital Partners, April 2026 · Investor, in company release
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Quartzy, Inc., CIK 0001579981
- Public recordForm D, Quartzy, Inc.
- Public recordForm D, Quartzy, Inc.
- Public recordNo 510(k), PMA, trial, NIH or NSF award on file under the company name
- IndependentQuartzy snaps $6.6M in new funding to bring some order to labs
- IndependentLife Sciences Marketplace Quartzy Raises $17 Million To Build Up The Supply Side
- IndependentQuartzy Opens Second Distribution Warehouse
- IndependentQuartzy Raises $23M in Funding
- IndependentQuartzy Raises $23 Million Funding to Expand Life Sciences Procurement Platform
- IndependentQuartzy: $23 Million Financing From Avenue Capital And BroadOak
- User reportsQuartzy moving to a subscription
- User reportsAny lab using Quartzy 2025?
- ReferenceQuartzy
- CompanyChanges at Quartzy: New subscription structure
- CompanyAsk Adam: vol. 3
- CompanyQuartzy Experiences Explosive Growth
- CompanyQuartzy home, pricing, tour and Shop pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
