Stately Bio Raises $12M Seed to Develop Next Generation Regenerative Medicines with ML-Powered Cellular Imaging Platform

Stately Bio, a startup developing cell therapies using an ML-powered live-cell imaging platform, today 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). The company will use the new funding to scale its platform technology and mature its internal pipeline of stem cell-derived therapeutics.

Biologists’ Problem: Measuring Cells Without Killing Them

A major 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 process that is slow, expensive, and lethal to the cell. The fact that these measurements can only be taken once per cell makes it extremely 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 right type of tissue cell, often cannot be answered. This gap has hampered the development of cell therapies and regenerative medicine for decades.

“Stately Bio is fundamentally reshaping our understanding of cell therapies by decoding living cell states in real-time, all without invasive methods,” said Krish Ramadurai, partner at AIX Ventures. “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.”

Stately Bio’s Solution: Live-Cell Imaging to Enable Better Cell Therapies

Stately Bio’s technology removes the need to choose between measuring cells and keeping them alive. The company’s ML-driven imaging platform identifies and monitors cells in real time using only label-free, live-cell compatible imaging, with no need for fluorescent tags or genetic modification. By applying 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. 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 has 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. 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.

“At Stately Bio, we’re unlocking the power to decode cellular behaviors previously invisible to science,” said Frank Li, Founder and CEO of Stately Bio. “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.”

Stately Bio has validated its technology through multiple partnerships across different cell types and use cases. In a recent preclinical study with the New York Blood Center (NYBC), Stately Bio’s ML platform was able to identify specific subpopulations of stem cell-derived immune cells faster and more efficiently than gold-standard flow cytometry and immunofluorescence assays. This technical achievement earned the company the Top Scoring Start-Up (Enabler) Abstract Award at the upcoming ISCT 2025 Scientific Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

“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,” said Larry Luchsinger, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at NYBC.

Stately Bio’s team brings together seasoned experts in machine learning, stem cell biology, and biomanufacturing. The company was founded by Frank Li, an AI specialist who previously led machine learning at Alphabet’s Calico Life Sciences. He’s joined by an interdisciplinary team who bring 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.

Companies interested in partnering with Stately Bio can learn more at https://statelybio.com.

About Stately Bio

Stately Bio is a biotechnology company building machine learning for regenerative medicine. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Palo Alto, Stately Bio has developed an industry-leading computational platform that enables rapid, real-time insights into cell identity, quality, and behavior based on live-cell imaging. Stately Bio is harnessing its platform’s technological advantage to develop cell therapies and regenerative medicines for diseases of high unmet need. Learn more at https://statelybio.com.

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