Portal Biotechnologies Raises $9M in Funding Round Led by NFX 

The round also saw participation from existing investors including IA Ventures, Pear VC, Undeterred Ventures, IKJ Capital, and TechU Ventures.

The company plans to use the funds to expand its operations and continue developing its products and technology.

Portal is developing a platform for cell engineering that supports drug discovery and cell therapy. Its technology uses mechanoporation to efficiently deliver RNA, gene-editing tools, probes, and other molecules into cells that are typically difficult to modify.

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The platform is designed to work across a wide range of cell types and research workflows, making cell engineering more scalable and effective.

Improving Drug Discovery: Researchers from Merck, AbbVie, and Purdue are using Portal’s technology for new applications, including screening difficult-to-deliver molecules, peptide-based drugs, and advanced target-engagement and DNA-encoded library (DEL) assays. Since its launch earlier this year, several pharmaceutical companies have upgraded to Portal’s high-throughput Galaxy-i™ platform.

Creating Data for AI and Advancing Cell Therapy: The Ragon Institute of Harvard, MIT, and Mass General Brigham, together with Microsoft, have launched a two-year project using Portal’s platform to generate large-scale biological datasets for AI model training and immune system research. Portal is also supporting next-generation cell therapy development.

DARPA expanded its original $8 million contract for a portable device that can produce cell therapies at the point of care and is now helping commercialize the technology. Meanwhile, Mass General Brigham recently highlighted the use of Portal’s platform for same-day CAR-T cell therapy production.

"Portal unlocks many biology applications far beyond what has been feasible with existing technologies," said Armon Sharei, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Portal. "We’re excited to work with frontier partners to unlock new possibilities in cell engineering, drug discovery, and AI data generation."

"Portal is achieving what very few biotech platforms manage in their first three years: meaningful commercial revenue, technical validation from the world's largest companies, and a genuinely game-changing vision," said Omri Amirav-Drory, Ph.D., General Partner at NFX Bio. "With an elegant, scalable engineering platform, Portal is perfectly positioned to underpin future drug discovery, TechBio, and cell therapy ecosystems. We are thrilled to lead this round and back the Portal team."

About Portal Biotechnologies

Founded in 2023 by Armon Sharei and Alec Barclay, Portal is building a platform for cell engineering that supports both drug discovery and cell therapy development. Its proprietary technology enables the efficient and scalable delivery of RNA, gene-editing tools, probes, and other molecules into cells that are typically difficult to modify.

The platform is used at more than 100 customer sites, including the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies. Researchers use it to run large-scale screening programs and identify promising drug targets earlier, while cell therapy developers use it to engineer cells in ways that go beyond the capabilities of traditional viral delivery and electroporation methods.

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