Cellares, an Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), announced a $257 million Series D financing co‑led by investment funds managed by BlackRock and Eclipse, bringing the company’s total capital raised to $612 million. 

The Series D adds a new group of global investors, including accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., Baillie Gifford, Duquesne Family Office, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, and Gates Frontier, alongside continued participation from existing backers DC Global Ventures, DFJ Growth, and Willett Advisors.

The funding will support the global buildout of automated IDMO Smart Factories across South San Francisco, CA; Bridgewater, NJ; Leiden, the Netherlands; and Kashiwa City, Japan, to enable commercial launch and manufacturing of cell therapies for hundreds of thousands of patients annually.

Cellares expects to support clinical manufacturing in the first half of 2026, with commercial-scale manufacturing beginning in 2027.

Cellares’ IDMO model is designed to replace manual labor‑intensive contract manufacturing with advanced technologies for manufacturing and quality control – fully automated, GMP-compliant and ready for clinical and commercial use. 

The company’s Cell Shuttle system is closed‑system cell therapy production, and its Cell Q platform automates in‑process and release testing for thousands of patients per year. Together, these systems are designed to provide up to roughly 10‑fold higher throughput and lower per‑patient costs compared with conventional CDMO facilities of similar scale. Where conventional CDMOs need to build 10 facilities and hire thousands of employees to achieve commercial-scale capacity, Cellares needs to build one facility and hire hundreds of employees, according to the company. 

Cellares 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 has also received the U.S. FDA’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation, which can enable expedited review of regulatory submissions that incorporate the platform.