Cellares, an Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), has closed a $257 million Series D financing round co-led by investment funds managed by BlackRock and Eclipse. The funding brings the company's total capital raised to $612 million.
The round attracted a strong roster of new investors, including accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., Baillie Gifford, Duquesne Family Office, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, and Gates Frontier. Existing backers DC Global Ventures, DFJ Growth, and Willett Advisors also participated.
Cell therapy manufacturing has long relied on manual, labor-intensive processes that limit production scale and drive up costs. Cellares is addressing this bottleneck with fully automated systems designed to meet regulatory standards while supporting commercial-scale production.
"Cellares is building the high-tech, industrial backbone required for cell therapy to scale globally," said Andrew Farris, Managing Director at BlackRock. "Validated and cutting-edge automation, regulatory recognition, and growing commercial demand make Cellares a category‑defining platform in a rapidly growing global market projected to reach tens of billions of dollars per year over the coming decade."
The new capital will fund the buildout of automated IDMO Smart Factories across four locations: South San Francisco, California; Bridgewater, New Jersey; Leiden, the Netherlands; and Kashiwa City, Japan. These facilities are designed to enable unconstrained manufacturing of cell therapies for hundreds of thousands of patients each year.
Cellares expects to support clinical manufacturing in the first half of 2026, with commercial-scale production beginning in 2027. The company plans to use this funding to accelerate its path toward becoming a publicly traded company.
"For decades, cell therapy manufacturing has been constrained by artisanal, manual processes," said Joe Fath, Partner and Head of Growth at Eclipse. "Cellares has shown that integrated and high-throughput automation can meet regulatory standards, support commercial programs, and scale globally to unlock life-saving cell therapies for hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide."
Founded by Fabian Gerlinghaus, who serves as CEO, Cellares operates on the premise that the main barrier to expanding access to cell therapies is no longer scientific discovery but industrial capacity. The company's IDMO model replaces traditional contract manufacturing with advanced automation technologies built for both manufacturing and quality control.
"The barrier to curing more patients is no longer scientific — it is industrial," said Fabian Gerlinghaus, Co-Founder and CEO of Cellares. "With FDA validation, global commercial demand, and the capital to scale, we are building the high-tech infrastructure required to deliver cures and life-changing treatments worldwide. This financing puts Cellares on a clear, disciplined path toward becoming a public company."
At the core of Cellares' operations are two proprietary platforms. The Cell Shuttle™ system handles end-to-end, closed-system cell therapy production, while the Cell Q™ platform automates in-process and release testing for thousands of patients per year. Both systems are GMP-compliant and ready for clinical and commercial use. Together, they deliver up to roughly 10-fold higher throughput and lower per-patient costs compared with conventional contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) facilities of similar scale. Where conventional CDMOs need to build 10 facilities to achieve commercial-scale capacity, Cellares needs to build one facility. Where conventional CDMOs need to hire and train thousands of employees, Cellares needs to hire hundreds.
Cellares has automated various cell therapy processes and modalities across biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners. The company entered into a $380 million global manufacturing agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb, reserving commercial-scale capacity in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
The Cell Shuttle™ platform has also received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation, which can enable expedited review of regulatory submissions that incorporate the platform. This recognition validates the company's approach to automation and positions it well for future commercial manufacturing partnerships.
Headquartered in South San Francisco, California, Cellares operates a commercial-scale Smart Factory in Bridgewater, New Jersey, with additional facilities under construction in Europe and Japan. The company provides global biopharmaceutical partners with development and commercial manufacturing services designed to address the capacity, consistency, and cost limitations of traditional production models.
