Healthcare · Zurich
Cellae
Lab automation for cell therapy manufacturing.
- Stage
- Seed
- Founded
- Founded 2023
- First invested
- We invested 2024
- Team
- 17 people
- Board
- Board seat
- Total raised
- $3.5M
- Current stage
- Seed
- Team
- 17
- Founded
- 2023
What they build
The product, in plain terms
Cellae builds lab automation for cell therapy manufacturing. The company started in Zurich in 2023. We backed it at seed and have worked with the team through Seed.
- 01
Clinical workflows built with the people who use them, tested in a real setting before a single sales call.
- 02
Evidence generated on purpose. Studies, outcomes, published results, not testimonials.
- 03
Integrations with the record systems that already run the building, because nothing gets adopted beside them.
Where it stands
Numbers the team watches
Reported by the company at its most recent board meeting. We publish what founders are comfortable publishing and nothing more.
- Patients covered
- 779
- Clinician retention
- 92%
- Time to first result
- 2 weeks
Why we invested
The note from the first meeting
“We met Cellae in 2024, back when sales cycles ran in quarters and trust was the only thing that shortened them. We had been looking for a team in this category for about a year. They were the first ones who talked about the customer more than the technology.”
- Reached default-alive economics before raising a priced round.
- Hired its founding engineering team out of the alumni network.
- Went from prototype to paid pilot in a single quarter.
Founders
Who is building it
Both founders were in the room the day we wrote the check, and both still run the company.
Arjun Rao
Co-founder and CEO
Spent six years as a customer of the tools they now compete with.
Anton Bergman
Co-founder and CTO
Built the internal version at a previous employer and could not get it licensed out.
Timeline
How it has gone
The version we would give another investor, including the years where nothing looked like progress.
- 2023
Founded
Arjun Rao and Anton Bergman start Cellae in Zurich around a single wedge: lab automation for cell therapy manufacturing.
- 2024
We invested
We wrote the seed check and took a board seat. Grace Bennett has worked with the team ever since.
- 2025
Paid customers
Contracts replaced pilots, and the company stopped selling a roadmap and started selling a product.
- 2026
Seed round
Raised at $22M, led by an investor we introduced during diligence. We took our full pro rata.
- 2026
Where it stands
17 people, selling in more markets than it started in, still run by the two people who wrote the first version.
Alongside us
Co-investors
We share rounds with people we would want on our own cap table.
- Foundation Capital
- Emergence
- Bessemer
- Index Ventures
Working here
Open roles
Cellae is hiring in these areas. Mention us and the note gets to the founders directly.
- Regulatory
- Health system sales
- Clinical operations
Building something next to Cellae?
We are usually early to a category and happy to be early again. Send us the short version.