Prime Radiant Partners (“Prime Radiant”), a new advisory firm specializing in middle-market private equity investments focused on companies delivering next generation services and technologies within the healthcare and life sciences industries, today announced that Prime Radiant Fund SLP SICAV-RAIF, a fund advised by Prime Radiant, has made a $50 million growth equity investment in Cellares, the first-of-its-kind Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) working to automate the large-scale manufacturing of cutting-edge cell therapies. Prime Radiant joins a high-caliber group of Cellares investors, including investment funds managed by BlackRock, Eclipse, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., Baillie Gifford, Duquesne Family Office, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, Gates Frontier, DC Global Ventures, Willett Advisors, DFJ Growth, and ARK Invest. The partnership with Cellares marks Prime Radiant’s advised funds’ inaugural investment since the firm’s launch in 2025.
Prime Radiant was founded by Giovanni Fazio, Walid Gardezi, and Peter Soelkner, long-tenured healthcare investment and operating executives with over 70 years of experience collectively across private equity, pharmaceutical services, and life sciences. Prime Radiant Fund SLP SICAV-RAIF, the firm’s first advised fund, targets investments in middle-market companies across drug production services, outsourced pharma services, and health technology, with a focus on transatlantic opportunities in North America and Europe. Prime Radiant’s team will leverage its deep expertise and global network of strategic relationships across the pharmaceutical and life sciences ecosystem to help portfolio companies scale and drive innovation.
“The global healthcare market is undergoing a significant period of transformation driven by the launches of next-generation therapies and adoption of advanced technologies to improve patient care, while facing crosscurrents from increased regulatory complexity and aging populations across the world,” said Walid Gardezi, Co-Founder and Partner at Prime Radiant. “Cellares represents our strategy at work as we seek to partner with exceptional management teams and companies to accelerate growth and drive innovation to improve human health.”
Significant advancements in automation, AI, and precision manufacturing are reshaping how therapies are developed, manufactured, and delivered, creating opportunities for companies with the best technology and facilities to lead the new bioeconomy. Cellares seeks to disrupt and transform the traditional contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) model for cell therapy by providing fully automated, scalable cGMP clinical and commercial manufacturing services at lower per-patient cost to global pharma and biotech customers. Cellares’ proprietary Cell Shuttle platform addresses the critical manufacturing bottleneck in cell therapy and delivers higher throughput than conventional CDMOs, while utilizing less labor and facility space and minimizing process failure risk.
“Prime Radiant’s founders built their careers inside drug production and outsourced pharma services, so they understand the economics of the model Cellares is reshaping from firsthand experience,” said Fabian Gerlinghaus, Co-Founder and CEO of Cellares. “When investors with that background make you their first investment, it reflects real conviction in Cellares’ IDMO model which integrates world-class tools and integrated automation to offer global biopharmaceutical manufacturing services. As we expand our network of IDMO Smart Factories into the United States, Europe, and Japan their operational expertise will be invaluable.”
“We are excited to partner with Fabian and Omar and their immensely talented team for our debut investment,” said Peter Soelkner, Co-Founder and Partner at Prime Radiant. “Cellares is a company with world-class technology and a unique value proposition, which has the potential to fundamentally change market dynamics and how cell therapies reach patients at scale globally. We look forward to supporting Fabian and his team alongside a distinguished group of co-investors as they continue to scale and expand their footprint globally.”
“Our inaugural investment reflects both the strength of the Cellares platform and our conviction in the future of cell and gene therapy manufacturing,” added Giovanni Fazio, Co-Founder and Partner at Prime Radiant. “It is the first chapter in advising what we believe will be a distinctive portfolio of companies driving the next phase of healthcare and life sciences innovation, and we are just getting started.”
Prime Radiant’s international team combines deep healthcare investing experience with an operationally oriented value creation model in connection with controlled majority, minority growth, and carve-out transactions. Prime Radiant leverages an extensive network of industry advisors and executives and a data-driven investment process to identify and support companies at the forefront of healthcare innovation. Prime Radiant has offices in New York, Milan, and Munich.
About Prime Radiant Partners
Prime Radiant Fund SLP SICAV-RAIF is a Luxembourg based alternative investment fund advised by Prime Radiant Partners, an advisory firm specializing in middle-market high-growth, innovation-driven private equity investments within the healthcare and life sciences sectors across North America and Europe. Prime Radiant Partners’ leaders have more than 70 years of combined experience as investors, operating executives, and strategic partners who bring differentiated sector expertise, a data-driven investment process, and relentless focus on operational excellence. Prime Radiant has offices in New York, Milan, and Munich. For more information, please visit: https://www.primeradiantpartners.com.
About Cellares
Cellares is the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), providing global cell therapy development and manufacturing services through an Industry 4.0 approach to the mass manufacture of the living drugs of the 21st century. The company enables drug sponsors to develop, scale, and commercialize cell therapies with the capacity, reliability, and economics required to meet total patient demand.
Cellares’ fully automated platforms — Cell ShuttleⓇ for end-to-end cell therapy manufacturing and Cell Q™ for automated in-process and release quality control — are deployed across its network of IDMO Smart Factories worldwide. These technologies deliver industry-leading manufacturing economics, higher process success rates, and the ability to produce up to 10× more cell therapy batches than conventional CDMOs with comparable footprint and headcount, resulting in the lowest cost of manufacturing in the industry. The Cell Shuttle is the first cell therapy manufacturing platform to receive the FDA’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation, and has demonstrated a 100% automation success rate across more than a dozen automated processes.
Cellares has achieved key clinical validation milestones, including a successful IND Amendment enabling active clinical manufacturing on the Cell Shuttle platform, and the successful dosing of first patients in a partner clinical trial — marking the platform’s transition from development-stage technology to clinically validated manufacturing infrastructure. These milestones span multiple therapeutic areas and cell therapy modalities, including both oncology and autoimmune indications.
Headquartered in South San Francisco, California, Cellares operates its first commercial-scale IDMO Smart Factory in Bridgewater, New Jersey, with additional facilities under construction in Europe and Japan. Through its global manufacturing network, Cellares is purpose-built to support both clinical and commercial programs and to expand access to life-saving cell therapies worldwide. For more information, visit www.cellares.com and follow Cellares on LinkedIn.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260614031052/en/
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