Pharma giant Merck to buy Raleigh startup that genders baby chickens
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Merck Animal Health will acquire Raleigh’s Targan to expand in commercial poultry.
- Targan’s WingScan uses cameras and conveyors and is at least 97% accurate.
- WingScan can gender up to 160,000 chicks per hour and has processed over a billion.
A North Carolina startup that sexes and sorts chicks has found an exit via one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.
Merck Animal Health, a division of the large New Jersey drugmaker, last week announced it will acquire the 11-year-old Raleigh company Targan to expand in the commercial poultry industry.
Targan has developed a system called WingScan that automates the traditionally laborious task of gendering newborn chickens. Its machine uses multi-level conveyor belts and high-speed cameras to separate cockerels (males) from pullets (females) based on their feathers. Targan says the system is at least 97% accurate and had processed more than 1 billion birds worldwide as of mid-2025.
In a June 11 statement, Merck noted WingScan can gender up to 160,000 newborn chickens per hour. Merck didn’t disclose how much it will pay but said its animal health division first invested in Targan in 2017 and is now one of the Raleigh company’s largest shareholders.
“The acquisition of TARGAN’s best-in-class biodevice technology for use in commercial hatcheries complements and accelerates our growing biopharmaceutical presence in poultry and increases our ability to deliver significant customer value globally,” Merck Animal Health president Rick DeLuca was quoted in the statement.
Besides sexing, Targan has also developed technology for vaccinating day-old chicks by spraying their eyes.
Merck said it expected the acquisition to complete later this year, pending regulatory approval.
Merck grows NC Triangle footprint
Targan was founded in 2015 by biotech veteran Ramin Karimpour, who previously worked at Pfizer and the animal healthcare company Zoetis. It employed roughly 125 people as of September 2023. That same month, it relocated from Morrisville to a new headquarters on East Six Forks Road in Raleigh’s Midtown district. Part of its new space used to be a Kroger grocery.
“Merck Animal Health has been a foundational partner of TARGAN since our inception through its belief and commitment to scientific excellence and a common goal of bringing technological innovation to the livestock industry,” Karimpour was quoted in the Merck statement.
Targan has not responded to questions from The News & Observer about the purchasing price or its current headcount.
Merck is a major Triangle employer outside animal health. The 58th-most valuable public company, Merck has a vaccine manufacturing campus in north Durham that continues to employ hundreds despite recent layoffs after the pharmaceutical giant stopped producing its HPV, or human papillomavirus, vaccine Gardasil locally.
Merck has grown its Triangle-area footprint in other ways, too.
In July, Merck made one of 2025’s largest health care acquisitions when it spent around $10 billion to buy the British drugmaker Verona Pharma, which has its U.S. headquarters in Raleigh. Verona makes a treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.
