Stately Bio, a company developing cell therapies using an ML-based live-cell imaging platform, announced $12 million in seed funding led by AIX Ventures, with participation from Dimension Capital, Foothill Ventures, Village Global, Caffeinated Capital, Mitsui Global Investment, BoxOne Ventures, Axial VC, Jeff Dean (Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind), Jeremy Wertheimer (co-founder of ITA Software), and Tom Berry (co-founder of Carbon Health).
What the funding will be used for: The company will utilize the new funding to scale its platform technology and mature its internal pipeline of stem cell-derived therapeutics.
Value proposition: A significant bottleneck in the development and production of cell therapies is the reliance on destructive approaches to understand cell state. For example, identifying a cell’s differentiation state typically involves breaking open the cell to measure the presence or absence of specific molecules inside it – a slow, expensive, and lethal process. These measurements can only be taken once per cell, making it difficult to study, monitor, and control how cells change over time. As a result, critical questions, like how to guide stem cells to mature into the correct type of tissue cell, often cannot be answered. This gap has hampered the development of cell therapies and regenerative medicine for decades.
What Stately Bio does: Stately Bio’s technology also removes the need to select between measuring and keeping cells alive. The company’s ML-driven imaging platform identifies and monitors cells in real time using only label-free, live-cell compatible imaging without fluorescent tags or genetic modification.
Using advanced machine learning, Stately Bio’s technology can quantify diverse cell types, track differentiation progress, optimize protocols, and even forecast manufacturing outcomes, all in real time without ever touching or harming the cells. And for biopharma companies, these real-time insights translate into faster process development cycles and better control over quality and consistency, ensuring each run meets the purity and functionality needed for patients.
On the discovery side, Stately Bio deployed its technology platform to improve the differentiation of stem cells into mature cells of high therapeutic value, starting with an industry-leading liver cell program. And compared to the state of the art, Stately Bio’s liver cells show 3x-10x improvement across a panel of metabolic assays of key liver functions. The company is planning to expand to additional cell types and is actively seeking partners to advance the use of its liver cells for toxicity testing, disease modeling, and therapeutics. Stately Bio has validated its technology through multiple partnerships across different cell types and use cases.
The team: Stately Bio’s team combines seasoned experts in machine learning, stem cell biology, and biomanufacturing. And the company was founded by Frank Li, an AI specialist who previously led machine learning at Alphabet’s Calico Life Sciences. He is joined by an interdisciplinary team that brings deep technical know-how and industry experience from MIT’s Broad Institute, Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and National Resilience.
KEY QUOTES:
“Stately Bio is fundamentally reshaping our understanding of cell therapies by decoding living cell states in real-time, all without invasive methods. This revolutionary approach addresses a critical bottleneck that has long limited breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, unlocking faster development of safer, more effective cell-based treatments. We’re thrilled to support Frank and his exceptional team as they pioneer the next era of cellular medicine for millions of patients.”
Krish Ramadurai, partner at AIX Ventures
“At Stately Bio, we’re unlocking the power to decode cellular behaviors previously invisible to science. This seed funding allows us to scale our technology and transform the landscape of regenerative medicine—making cell therapies faster to develop, more affordable, and accessible to all.”
Frank Li, Founder and CEO of Stately Bio
“It’s very exciting to see the community recognize the utility of the idea and impact of Stately Bio’s technology. This is a powerful new capability that fundamentally reshapes how one can approach cell therapy discovery and manufacturing. We are proud to work with Stately Bio on these important advancements.”
Larry Luchsinger, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at NYBC
