Multiply Labs builds robotic production clusters for drugmakers, initially focusing on cell and gene therapies made for individual patients. The systems move materials between pieces of processing equipment and can handle tasks such as stirring vials and mixing ingredients. A newly announced $75 million Series B will help the company expand that approach to more therapies.
Patrick Soon-Shiong led the financing, according to SiliconANGLE, with AstraZeneca and robotics manufacturer Teradyne among the other backers.
The company is tackling a manufacturing process that can require scientists to load materials into one machine, wait for processing and then carry the output to the next machine. Multiply Labs instead places different pieces of equipment inside specialized enclosures and uses robotic arms on a rail system to move materials among them. Monitoring hardware can watch the production line for problems.
The harder problem isn’t moving a vial. It’s changing an approved production process. Drugmakers generally need regulatory approval before altering a manufacturing step, so Multiply Labs has designed its robots to reproduce existing human actions. The company says that leaves the workflow effectively unchanged and avoids the need for a new approval.
Its robots use tactile sensors to control the pressure applied to vials, while an AI model trained on pharmaceutical-customer data manages the process. The equipment can transfer materials as well as carry out some production steps, giving drugmakers a route to automate work that otherwise passes through human hands over weeks or months.
Multiply Labs says the system can increase manufacturing throughput by 100 times and reduce cost per dose by 74%. The company plans to use the Series B to expand production capacity and add support for more therapy types.
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