❯ Pharma robotics company Multiply Labs raises a $75 million Series B to have robots take over cell therapy production

Patrick Soon-Shiong leadsSan Francisco robotics company Multiply Labs has raised a $75 million Series B led by Patrick Soon-Shiong and NantWorks, the company he founded. According to AI Insider on October 6, new investors include AstraZeneca, Lingotto and Teradyne, with existing backers such as Lux Capital and Founders Fund returning; total funding exceeds $100 million.

Handing manual steps to robot armsFounded in 2016, Multiply Labs develops autonomous robotic systems for drug manufacturing. The company says many biologic manufacturing steps are still manual, which slows production and raises contamination risk. Its robotic clusters perform these timed, repetitive steps in an enclosed environment that complies with good manufacturing practice, and work with drugmakers’ existing equipment without requiring a new facility or changes to validated processes.

It sells equipment, not contract manufacturingThe systems are bought and operated by pharmaceutical and biologics companies; Multiply Labs does not offer outsourced manufacturing. The company started with cell and gene therapies and is expanding into antibodies, viral vectors and mRNA therapies. It claims its robotic clusters cut the cost per dose by 74% and deliver up to 100 times the throughput of manual manufacturing; both figures come from the company and have not been independently verified.

From clinical to commercial productionThe new funding will be used to expand manufacturing capacity, speed up product development and grow the engineering, regulatory and commercial teams as the company moves from clinical-stage deployments to commercial production. CEO Fred Parietti said robotics is the only way to deliver these therapies to patients at scale. If robots can reliably meet regulators’ requirements for the manufacturing process, drugmakers will not need to add skilled technicians in proportion as they scale up.

▮ SIGNALWith AI speeding up drug discovery, the bottleneck has moved to manufacturing, and capital is starting to flow into the automation that gets drugs made.