The Boston-based startup is building a foundation model for cell behavior, backed by $62M+ in funding and a Parkinson's therapy already headed for Phase 2 trials.
Cellular Intelligence just assembled the kind of scientific advisory board that most biotech startups can only daydream about. Robert “Bob” Langer, co-founder of Moderna and arguably the most cited engineer in history, and Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist and a Turing Award winner, have both signed on to advise the company as it tries to do for cell biology what large language models did for text.
Alongside Langer and LeCun, two other heavyweights joined the scientific advisory board on Monday. Jens Nielsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s BioInnovation Institute, and Fabian Theis, who directs the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, round out the new additions. Langer is also joining the company’s board of directors as an observer.
What Cellular Intelligence actually does #
The company, originally known as Somite AI, rebranded to Cellular Intelligence in January 2026 and released a white paper outlining its vision for what it calls “cell fate engineering.” The analogy the company draws is to AlphaFold, DeepMind’s breakthrough in protein structure prediction. Where AlphaFold made it possible to predict how proteins fold, Cellular Intelligence wants to make it possible to predict how cells respond to sequences of biochemical signals.
Their approach relies on a proprietary capsule-based platform that can run massive numbers of experiments simultaneously. The company has scaled from an initial 27,000 experimental conditions to over 1 million unique sequential signal combinations. That dataset then feeds transformer-style AI models trained specifically on dynamic cellular responses. The efficiency claim is striking: their capsule technology reportedly offers more than 1,000x the throughput of conventional methods.
The founding team includes Micha Breakstone, a repeat AI entrepreneur, alongside professors from Harvard Medical School, MIT, and the University of Washington, several of whom hold National Academy memberships. The company was founded between 2023 and 2024.
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Parkinson’s therapy and Novo Nordisk’s bet #
In May 2026, the company acquired STEM-PD, an allogeneic cell therapy program for Parkinson’s disease, from Novo Nordisk. The program already holds FDA Fast Track designation and is ready for Phase 2 clinical trials. Novo Nordisk simultaneously made a strategic equity investment as part of the deal.
On the leadership front, the company appointed Arjun Raj as Chief Scientific Officer in August 2026, further integrating computational approaches into its research operations.
Funding and competitive positioning #
Total funding for Cellular Intelligence sits between $62 million and $70 million. The largest chunk came from a $47 million Series A round in May 2025, led by Khosla Ventures. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, AMD Ventures, and other backers also participated.
What distinguishes Cellular Intelligence from competitors like Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Isomorphic Labs, and Insilico Medicine is its specific focus on cell signaling dynamics rather than molecular structure or drug-target interactions. Regenerative medicine relies on engineering living cells to treat disease, requiring the orchestration of a sequence of biological events that transforms one cell type into another — a fundamentally different challenge than traditional small-molecule drug development.
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