Multiply Labs is developing a robot designed to automate the production of cell and gene therapies, treatments that are currently made largely by hand in cleanroom laboratories. By integrating robotics and AI technologies from NVIDIA, the company aims to make these therapies easier to scale, more consistent, and less dependent on manual labor.
Cell and gene therapies are often personalized for individual patients and involve many precise handling steps, such as moving vials, tubes, and biological materials between instruments. Today, much of this work is done manually by trained technicians, which limits how many therapies can be produced and increases costs and variability.
Multiply Labs’ approach replaces much of this manual work with a robotic production cell. The system uses four robotic arms working in parallel inside a cleanroom. These robots are designed to carry out repetitive and delicate tasks such as picking up containers, transferring materials between processing steps, and assembling components needed for therapy preparation. According to the company, this setup can dramatically increase the number of patient doses produced within the same cleanroom space.
To develop and train these robots, Multiply Labs uses digital simulations and AI software rather than relying only on physical trial and error. With tools such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim, the company creates digital twins of its robotic systems. These virtual replicas allow engineers to test new robot designs and workflows in software before deploying them in real laboratories, reducing development time and risk.
The robots are also being trained to handle variation in real-world lab environments. Using NVIDIA Isaac GR00T and perception tools like NVIDIA FoundationPose and NVIDIA FoundationStereo, the system can learn from demonstrations by human experts. This makes it possible for robots to recognize objects, understand their position, and repeat complex handling steps without interrupting normal laboratory operations.
In practical terms, the robot does not design therapies or make medical decisions. Its role is to automate the physical manufacturing work—moving, handling, and assembling materials in a controlled and repeatable way. The goal is to make advanced therapies faster to produce, easier to scale, and more accessible by reducing bottlenecks in manufacturing rather than in medical research itself.
By focusing on the physical production layer, Multiply Labs positions robotics as infrastructure for biomanufacturing, similar to how industrial robots transformed automotive and electronics factories. In this case, the target is not mass-market products, but high-value, patient-specific therapies that are currently constrained by how they are made.
