Cellares, an Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) based in San Francisco, CA, has raised $257 million in Series D funding led by BlackRock and Eclipse.
The round also saw other investors T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., Baillie Gifford, Duquesne Family Office, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, and Gates Frontier, alongside continued participation from existing backers DC Global Ventures, DFJ Growth, and Willett Advisors.
The funding round increased the total raised to $612 million.
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The company plans to use the funds to expand its automated IDMO Smart Factories in South San Francisco, CA; Bridgewater, NJ; Leiden, Netherlands; and Kashiwa City, Japan, supporting the commercial launch and large-scale production of cell therapies for hundreds of thousands of patients each year.
Cellares’ IDMO model replaces manual, labor-intensive contract manufacturing with fully automated, GMP-compliant technology ready for clinical and commercial use. Its Cell Shuttle™ system handles end-to-end, closed-system cell therapy production, while the Cell Q™ platform automates testing for thousands of patients each year. Together, these systems offer up to 10 times higher throughput and lower per patient costs than traditional CDMOs.
Where conventional CDMOs need 10 facilities and thousands of staff to reach commercial scale capacity, Cellares achieves the same with just one facility and a few hundred employees.
“Cellares is creating the advanced infrastructure needed to scale cell therapy worldwide,” said Andrew Farris, Managing Director at BlackRock. “With proven automation, regulatory approval and rising commercial demand, Cellares is setting the standard in a fast-growing global market expected to reach tens of billions of dollars annually in the next decade.”
“For years, cell therapy manufacturing has relied on slow, manual processes,” said Joe Fath, Partner and Head of Growth at Eclipse. “Cellares has proven that automated, high throughput systems can meet regulatory standards, support commercial programs, and scale globally to deliver life saving therapies to hundreds of thousands of patients.”
Cellares plans to start clinical manufacturing in early 2026, with full commercial-scale production beginning in 2027.
“The challenge to curing more patients isn’t science anymore — it’s manufacturing,” said Fabian Gerlinghaus, Co-Founder and CEO of Cellares. “With FDA approval, global demand, and funding to grow, we are building the advanced infrastructure needed to deliver life-changing treatments worldwide. This funding moves Cellares closer to becoming a public company.”
The platform has automated many cell therapy processes for biotech and pharmaceutical partners. Cellares signed a $380 million global manufacturing deal with Bristol Myers Squibb, securing commercial-scale capacity in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. The Cell Shuttle™ also received the FDA’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation, which can speed up regulatory review for submissions using the platform.
About Cellares
Founded in 2019 and based in South San Francisco, California, Cellares is led by CEO Fabian Gerlinghaus and specializes in automated, large-scale cell therapy production as an Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO). The company provides development and commercial manufacturing services to global biopharmaceutical partners, overcoming the capacity, consistency, and cost limits of traditional manual production. Cellares operates a commercial-scale Smart Factory in Bridgewater, New Jersey, with additional facilities under construction in Europe and Japan.
Cellares operates fully automated platforms across its IDMO Smart Factories: Cell Shuttle™ handles the entire cell therapy manufacturing process, and Cell Q™ automates in-process and release testing. These cGMP-compliant systems improve consistency, boost manufacturing success, and achieve up to 10 times higher throughput than traditional CDMOs with a similar size and staff.
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