Insider Brief
- Multiply Labs raised $75 million in Series B funding to expand its robotic manufacturing platform for cell and gene therapies and other advanced biologics, bringing total funding to more than $100 million.
- AstraZeneca Ventures, Lingotto, Legend Biotech and Strange Ventures joined returning investors Casdin Capital, Lux Capital and Founders Fund in leading the round, with proceeds going toward manufacturing capacity, product development and team expansion.
- Multiply Labs said its robotic clusters can reduce cost per dose by 74% and deliver up to 100 times the throughput of manual manufacturing while working with existing pharmaceutical equipment and processes.
Multiply Labs has raised $75 million in Series B funding to expand its robotic manufacturing platform for cell and gene therapies and other advanced biologics. The round brings the San Francisco company’s total funding to more than $100 million since its founding in 2016.
AstraZeneca Ventures, Lingotto, Legend Biotech and Strange Ventures joined returning investors Casdin Capital, Lux Capital and Founders Fund in leading the round, according to Multiply Labs. The company indicated it plans to use the capital to expand manufacturing capacity, speed up product development and grow its engineering, regulatory and commercial teams as it goes from clinical-stage deployments toward commercial-scale production.
Multiply Labs noted the problem in the manufacturing process is that it remains largely manual even as artificial intelligence accelerates drug discovery. The company said contamination during biomanufacturing can cost millions of dollars and delay access to treatments, creating pressure to increase production capacity as more therapies move through development.
The company, founded in 2016 as a Y Combinator startup, builds robotic clusters that work with pharmaceutical manufacturers’ existing instruments and processes without requiring new facilities or changes to already validated practices. Each enclosed system automates timed and repetitive steps in biologics manufacturing and is designed to comply with Good Manufacturing Practice requirements.
Multiply Labs said the platform can reduce cost per dose by 74% and deliver as much as 100 times the throughput of manual manufacturing. The company describes the system as autonomous rather than simply automated because it can learn, adapt and operate continuously while reducing manual handoffs between manufacturing steps.
“Robotics is the only way to deliver these therapies to patients at scale,” said co-founder and CEO Fred Parietti said. “AI is designing more therapies than the industry will ever be able to manufacture. This funding lets us build the capacity to close that gap, so more of the patients who need these treatments can actually get them.”
Multiply Labs initially focused on cell and gene therapies and is expanding the platform to antibodies, viral vectors and mRNA. Its robotic clusters are owned and operated directly by pharmaceutical and biologics companies rather than provided as an outsourced manufacturing service, allowing customers to keep control of production capacity.
