Company Overview
About Cellares
Cellares is a clinical-stage biotech and contract manufacturing company founded in 2019 by Fabian Gerlinghaus, James Cha, and Yi Zhao, headquartered in South San Francisco, California. The company has built the world''s first fully automated, integrated cell therapy manufacturing platform — the Cell Shuttle — which automates the entire end-to-end process of manufacturing patient-specific T-cell therapies (including CAR-T cells) in a single closed system. Traditional cell therapy manufacturing is highly manual, requiring highly trained technicians, specialized cleanroom infrastructure, and weeks of labor-intensive processing. Cellares replaces this with industrial-scale automation, compressing production timelines and dramatically reducing the cost and variability of cell therapy manufacturing.
Business Model & Competitive Advantage
Cellares raised $257 million in Series D financing in January 2026, co-led by investment funds managed by BlackRock and Eclipse, with participation from T. Rowe Price, Baillie Gifford, Duquesne Family Office, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, and Gates Frontier. This brought total capital raised to $612 million. The company previously closed a $380 million global manufacturing agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb, reserving commercial-scale capacity across U.S., European, and Japanese facilities. Other customers include Kite (a Gilead company), City of Hope, and Cabaletta Bio.
Competitive Landscape 2025–2026
Cellares is developing a global manufacturing network spanning South San Francisco, Bridgewater (New Jersey), Leiden (Netherlands), and Kashiwa City (Japan). Clinical manufacturing is expected to begin in the first half of 2026 with commercial-scale capacity targeted for 2027. The company''s automated Cell Q testing suite complements the Cell Shuttle by automating quality control testing inline with manufacturing, further reducing time-to-patient and improving lot release consistency.
Key Differentiators
Emerging Innovator
Cellares is an emerging player bringing innovative solutions to the Life Sciences & BioTech market.
Frequently Asked Questions
Estimated Visibility Trend (Beta)
Simulated 8-week rolling score
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