Most startups talk automation like it’s a catchphrase, Celltrio builds it like a surgeon with a robot for a scalpel. And now, they’ve got $15 million to take that precision global.
Let’s call it what it is: sterile cell culturing is one of the last holdouts of manual labor in biotech, and that’s not a badge of honor. Celltrio stepped in back in 2018 with a simple thesis and a hell of a toolkit, industrial-grade robotics applied to biopharma’s most finicky workflows. The result? RoboCell, a modular automation platform built to scale sterile cell and gene therapy manufacturing without missing a pipette beat.
The vision is sharp, but the founders are sharper. Charlie Duncheon, CEO and co-founder, has been doing robotics since before half the Valley learned to code. Adept Technology IPO? That was him. Artificial Muscle (acquired by Bayer)? Also him. Grabit? Check. He doesn’t just build companies, he builds automation ecosystems.
Then there’s Jin-Oh Kim, Ph.D., CTO and co-founder. Stanford, Samsung, Carnegie Mellon. A guy who has 10 patents under his belt and still teaches robotics like it’s an Olympic sport. Raphael Kim rounds out the founding crew as Director of Product Management, with battle scars from Comprehend Systems and a résumé that reads like an operator’s handbook for high-growth, high-stakes product scaling.
The $15M round, led by Premier Partners, is more than a cash infusion, it’s a manufacturing war chest. Celltrio’s Fremont HQ is ramping up production lines like it’s go time (because it is). With global expansion locked in for North America, Europe, and Asia, RoboCell isn’t just going to be a biotech darling, it’s positioning to be the backbone of cell therapy infrastructure. They’re not chasing trends, they’re building what the industry’s going to need five years from now.
And this isn’t just hardware with a nice brochure. We’re talking GMP compliant, BSL2 capable, fully traceable automation that runs 24/7. With integrations into Biosero’s Green Button Go and Thermo Fisher’s Momentum scheduling stack, Celltrio plays nice with legacy systems while setting a new bar for sterile workflow automation.
Here’s the real play: when you make it modular, sterile, and scalable, you don’t just win a few labs. You become the infrastructure for a therapy revolution. That’s the bet Premier Partners is making. And honestly, it’s a damn good one.
