Multiply Labs, a San Francisco-based company developing automated manufacturing systems to produce individualized drugs at scale, raised $20 million in a Series A funding. The round was led by Casdin Capital. The oversubscribed round brings Multiply Labs’ total funding raised to date to more than $25 million.
It leverages automation to address the fundamental limitations of the heavily manual processes that are traditionally used to manufacture small-batch pharmaceuticals. Multiply Labs’ uses collaborative robots and cloud-controlled fleets to enable the production of individualized drugs at industrial scale.
The company provides robotic manufacturing capacity as a service for biotech organizations, focusing on two markets: personalized capsules for clinical trials and cell therapies. Multiply Labs is developing cloud-controlled robotic systems for the production of experimental cell therapies in collaboration with a Consortium of industrial and research organizations. Multiply Labs uses AWS RoboMaker to automate deployment of updated code to its robots, based on ROS 2. It uses AWS CodeDeploy and AWS CodePipeline to set up and deploy software builds, and it relies on Amazon DynamoDB to store data. Its robots interact with servers that send ROS 2 batch data in and out of an Amazon DynamoDB database.
“We strongly believe that robotic technology is essential to scale the production of individualized, next-gen drugs. Only automation can bring these life-saving therapies to all the patients who need them, safely and efficiently,” said Fred Parietti, PhD, Co-founder and CEO of Multiply Labs. “Our goal is to augment pharma manufacturing with deep, industry-leading robotics technology. We are proud to work with top investors in both biopharma and tech. This funding will allow us to grow our installed production capacity, while expanding our range of applications to new therapies.”
“The Multiply Labs robotics platform has the added potential to introduce a digital, total quality control system,” said Michael Doherty, former head of Regulatory Affairs at Roche. “It is with great excitement that I join Multiply Labs’ Board of Directors to support the team in developing and scaling this pioneering technology.”
“If you look behind every great disruptive technological advance you will find scaled and efficient manufacturing,” said Eli Casdin, Chief Investment Officer and Founder, Casdin Capital. “Precision medicine and the wave of molecular therapies on the horizon is no different. We see Multiply Labs’ platform and the team’s deep expertise in robotics and pharma R&D, as uniquely positioned to deliver the increased efficiency, lower cost, and greater flexibility necessary to accelerate innovative drug discovery and production. We are excited to lend our help and capital to fuel the company’s next leg of growth.”
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