Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Joins Cellares’ $277 Million Series D

Cellares, the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), providing global cell therapy development and manufacturing services through an Industry 4.0 approach to the mass manufacture of living drugs, led by Fabian Gerlinghaus and Omar Kurdi, has announced that ARK Invest has joined the company’s Series D financing with a $20 million investment, bringing the total Series D to $277 million. ARK joins a high-caliber group of Cellares investors, including BlackRock, Eclipse, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., Baillie Gifford, Duquesne Family Office, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, Gates Frontier, DC Global Ventures, DFJ Growth, and Willett Advisors.

Scaling Cell Therapy Manufacturing.

Cathie Wood said the science behind cell therapies has already been proven, but manufacturing remains the key bottleneck. She believes Cellares is addressing this challenge by combining robotics, software, and biotechnology to transform cell therapy production from a highly customized process into a scalable industrial platform capable of meeting growing patient demand.

Ovid Amadi highlighted the complexity of manufacturing personalized cell therapies under GMP conditions, arguing that traditional manual processes cannot scale effectively. He described Cellares as pioneering a new Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) model that combines capabilities traditionally spread across tool providers, automation vendors, and contract manufacturing organizations.

According to ARK, confidence in the company stems from both technical and commercial validation. Cellares has demonstrated its platform across multiple manufacturing workflows, secured commercial supply agreements with Bristol Myers Squibb and Cabaletta Bio, and achieved an important milestone when the first patients received therapies manufactured using its platform earlier this year. These developments suggest the company's automation approach is moving beyond promise and into real-world clinical and commercial deployment.

Fabian Gerlinghaus said Cellares has successfully manufactured cell therapies on its Cell Shuttle platform and delivered patient doses on schedule, providing real-world validation of its automated manufacturing approach.

According to Gerlinghaus, the industry's challenge has never been proving that automation can manufacture cell therapies, but demonstrating that it can do so reliably at commercial scale and at a cost that expands patient access. He said the new funding will support that objective as Cellares prepares to bring its global network of IDMO Smart Factories online beginning in 2027, creating the infrastructure needed to scale production of next-generation cell therapies.

Building A Global Cell Therapy Manufacturing Network.

The investment follows a series of milestones that validate Cellares' automated manufacturing platform at both clinical and commercial scale.

In April, the company successfully manufactured and delivered the first two GMP doses of rese-cel, an investigational CAR T therapy from Cabaletta Bio, using its Cell Shuttle® platform. Both doses met release specifications and were administered to patients on schedule. Following this achievement, Cabaletta Bio signed a 10-year commercial supply agreement with Cellares to support future production of the therapy.

These developments build on Cellares' previously announced $380 million global manufacturing agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb, which reserves commercial-scale manufacturing capacity across the United States, Europe, and Japan for BMS cell therapy programs.

Today, Cellares operates IDMO Smart Factories in South San Francisco and Bridgewater, New Jersey, while additional facilities are being developed in Leiden and Kashiwa. Once fully operational, the company's global manufacturing network is designed to provide drug developers with standardized, automated production infrastructure capable of supporting commercial-scale cell therapy manufacturing for hundreds of thousands of patients annually starting in 2027.