The funding round was spearheaded by Talis and saw contributions from LifeX, Notley Ventures, and prominent angel investors, including Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder of Lookout, and Amit Gupta, a former executive at Benchling. The investment aims to support the expansion of Monomer's team and the ongoing enhancement of its platform.

Monomer Bio merges robotic lab automation with comprehensive data management, empowering researchers to dramatically elevate the scope and intricacy of their experiments. This advancement paves the way for methodical investigations into novel drugs and therapeutic methods.

The platform is meticulously crafted to simplify data management, analytics, and automation for the scientific community. Monomer offers actionable insights through advanced deep learning applications, such as utilising machine learning to identify significant alterations in cell morphology from microscopy images. This capability enhances the scale, complexity, and success rates of scientific experiments.

Pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and research institutions engaged in cell-based studies, including gene editing, T-cell engineering, and the creation of innovative disease models, have already incorporated Monomer's technology. Indee Labs, a biotech entity focused on immune cell research, reported an eightfold increase in key cell production thanks to Monomer, with other early adopters experiencing comparable benefits.

Designed to be compatible with laboratory equipment from leading manufacturers, Monomer's platform features an easy-to-use interface that allows research teams to efficiently manage custom automation workflows. The Monomer team, with its extensive expertise in lab hardware and machine learning, offers tailored support to assess and refine laboratory setups according to the unique requirements of each client.

Jimmy Sastra, CEO, and Co-Founder of Monomer Bio said: “With Monomer, scientists can realise the benefits of lab automation and artificial intelligence, without having to deal with the headache of integrating disparate hardware and software systems.

“We are thrilled to partner with Talis Capital and our other investors who share our vision to transform biotech labs with modern software. This funding will allow us to empower many more scientists, in laboratories of all sizes, to harness the power of automation.”

Mark Zhang, CTO, and Co-Founder of Monomer Bio said: “Our goal is to eliminate manual bottlenecks in the lab, so that researchers can focus on their work. Monomer opens up new horizons by digitising formerly analog lab processes, enabling customers to drastically expand the scale and complexity of their experiments.”  

Kirill Tashilov, General Partner at Talis Capital ,who led the funding said: "Cell and gene therapy represents the future of drug development, but companies and research organisations still face hurdles in scaling up their capabilities due to reliance on error-prone manual work. Not only is Monomer’s platform purpose-built for complex cell engineering workflows, but its focus is on the scientists actually conducting this research. It saves time, improves throughput, and is really easy to use.”