Startup founded by former Calico researcher aims to transform regenerative medicine by shortening the cell therapy development cycle.
After three years in stealth mode, Palo Alto-based biotech Stately Bio has emerged with $12 million in seed funding for its mission to improve regenerative medicine by integrating machine learning with cell biology. The company claims its ML-powered live-cell imaging platform is capable of delivering real-time insights into the identity, quality and behavior of living cells – without harming them.
Founded in 2022 by Frank Li, a former ML lead at longevity biotech Calico Life Sciences, Stately’s approach addresses a longstanding obstacle in cell therapy: the inability to monitor cells over time without destroying them in the process. Previous methods required killing cells to analyze their internal state, limiting the ability to observe developmental progress.
By contrast, Stately Bio’s platform uses label-free, live-cell imaging to examine cellular development dynamically. The company’s ML algorithms interpret the data to identify cell types and monitor differentiation without introducing genetic or chemical markers, enabling continuous observation and analysis of cell behavior. Stately claims this results in better control of therapeutic production and improved cell quality and consistency, leading to a significantly shortened development cycle for cell-based therapies.
“At Stately Bio, we’re unlocking the power to decode cellular behaviors previously invisible to science,” said Li. “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.”
Using its platform, Stately says it has produced liver cells that perform three to ten times better than current alternatives across multiple metabolic functions. These enhanced cells are being explored for use in drug toxicity screening, disease modeling and potential therapeutic applications.
According to Stately, the company has already demonstrated its technology in collaborative studies, including a recent project with the New York Blood Center, where its platform outperformed standard methods like flow cytometry in identifying subpopulations of immune cells derived from stem cells.
“This is a powerful new capability that fundamentally reshapes how one can approach cell therapy discovery and manufacturing,” said NYBC’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr Larry Luchsinger.
The funding round was led by AIX Ventures, with participation from several other VC firms as well as Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, ITA Software co-founder Jeremy Wertheimer and Carbon Health co-founder Tom Berry. Stately will use the funding to scale its platform and develop its internal pipeline of stem cell-derived therapeutics.
“Stately Bio is fundamentally reshaping our understanding of cell therapies by decoding living cell states in real-time, all without invasive methods,” said AIX partner Krish Ramadurai. “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.”
