Automata and CellVoyant Announce Strategic Partnership to Deliver AI-Powered Closed-Loop Cell Culture Workflows

SAN FRANCISCO — JPM Week—13 January 2026 — Automata, a leading provider of modular, fully-integrated and AI-ready lab automation, and CellVoyant, a pioneer in AI foundation models for ‘live’ label-free cell analytics and predictive cell biology, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver AI-powered, adaptive, iterative automation for advanced cell culture and cell-based therapeutic development workflows. The collaboration combines Automata’s fully-integrated, AI-ready, and easy-to-use LINQ™ automation platform with CellVoyant’s FateView™ and FateDrive™ AI systems—creating an integrated and intelligent approach where AI continuously interprets cell state and dynamically updates automation instructions in real time.

Together, Automata and CellVoyant are enabling a new operating model for biology: closed-loop, adaptive cell culture that can run 24/7, reduce manual intervention, preserve sample integrity, accelerate decision-making from days to minutes and significantly improve process outcomes.

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A Shared Vision: Adaptive Biology and Autonomous Labs, Delivered Through Automation + AI

Cell differentiation and cell culture processes are inherently variable and can require weeks of sustained attention. Traditional workflows often depend on daily manual interventions (including weekends), destructive sampling for quality metrics, and extensive trial-and-error to tune protocols. Legacy automation has helped with throughput, but many platforms remain fixed and monolithic, unable to change course when biology changes.

This partnership tackles that core challenge head-on: biology is dynamic; automation should be too.

“Cells behave differently from day to day even under the same triggers, depending on conditions, cell lines and cell batches,”

said Rafael E. Carazo Salas, Founder and CEO of CellVoyant.

“Being able to intervene adaptively, intelligently and autonomously, based on real biological signals, and to update experimental protocols as experiments unfold, is key to propel therapeutics development to the future. By combining CellVoyant’s AI with Automata’s flexible, modular, open LINQ platform we can make adaptive cell culture an operational reality.”

“Adaptive automation is the next step-change in enabling the future of labs today,”

said Mostafa ElSayed, Founder and CEO of Automata.‍

“By integrating LINQ™ with CellVoyant’s  FateDrive™, we’re enabling labs to step change current capabilities and move from static workflows to AI-guided execution, where the system can respond continuously to what the cells are doing and intelligently act accordingly.”

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Integrated Intelligence: From In-Silico Optimisation to Automated Execution

CellVoyant’s FateDrive™is an AI-driven optimization platform that builds on FateView™ - the company’s predictive cell analytics platform - to explore vast cell process design spaces in silico, forecast outcomes, and recommend optimal protocols. It enables faster, more informed decision-making in cell differentiation and bioprocess development.

Automata’s LINQ™ is an open lab automation platform that flexibly combines hardware with intelligent orchestration software. It enables labs to automate workflows, scale experiments, and monitor runs remotely, increasing efficiency and accelerating discovery.

Over the past two years, CellVoyant and Automata have worked closely to integrate FateDrive™ with the LINQ™ platform and validate the combined approach in real workflows. Together, the teams have demonstrated for instance up to 8-fold improvement in cardiac cell differentiation yield from stem cells leading to a >85% less costly cell derivation process, showing the large potential value of pairing AI-driven optimisation with flexible lab automation.

The combined system enables truly autonomous adaptive operations, where AI interprets ongoing biology with FateView™ thereby enabling  FateDrive™ to recommend optimized actions,  LINQ™ automation executes those actions, new data is collected, and AI updates experimental protocols yielding significantly improved outcomes.

Demonstrated Impact: Continuous Operation, Faster Decisions, Higher Reproducibility

After nearly two years of integration and development, the partnership has demonstrated the viability of adaptive automation for demanding cell culture and process development workflows. Key outcomes include:

• 24/7 operation, including weekends, reducing the burden of manual cell maintenance
• Non-destructive, continuous measurement, enabling repeat analysis of samples and update in sample treatment
• Faster decision cycles, enabling quantitative decisions in minutes instead of days
• Greater reproducibility, removing variability introduced by manual handling
• Scalable data acquisition, generating high-resolution time-series datasets that improve AI performance over time
• Higher process outcomes, leading to adaptive automation processes that are significantly more cost effective than static automation  

This capability also allows teams to terminate unsuccessful experiments earlier, reallocate resources faster, and optimize protocols across long-term horizons, such as multiday and multiweek processes.

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Expanding Access to Adaptive Automation for Biotech and Pharma and Advanced Therapy Development

Automata and CellVoyant are jointly positioning the integrated FateDrive™ and LINQ™ solution for teams developing and scaling cell culture workflows across research and translational settings. The partnership enables customers to combine AI-driven process development and optimization with flexible lab automation in a single, connected workflow.

Looking ahead, CellVoyant plans to work with clinical-stage biotech and pharma partners to apply autonomous capabilities for therapeutic derivation and process optimization, while Automata will enable scalable deployment through modular automation designed for rapid configuration and integration.

By working together, the companies aim to help labs move beyond manual trial-and-error and static automation toward adaptive, data-driven bioprocess development and autonomous labs where experimental decisions are continuously monitored and guided by predictive AI and executed efficiently through automation.

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About CellVoyant

CellVoyant is pioneering AI foundation models for cell biology that enable non-destructive, real-time analysis and optimization of cell-based processes. Its flagship products - FateView™ and FateDrive™ - computer vision with in silico modeling to help biologists monitor, predict, and optimize cell fate and process outcomes using non-destructive cell imaging readouts. CellVoyant’s approach preserves biological integrity while accelerating discovery and enabling scalable process control. To know more visit www.cellvoyant.com.

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About Automata

Automata is transforming lab automation for the AI era. The company delivers the only fully integrated, AI-ready platform that is modular, configurable, and open by design. While legacy systems fragment workflows and slow discovery, Automata modernizes lab operations—enabling scientists to program experiments, not robots. For more information, visit www.automata.tech.

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Media Contacts

Automata:  hello@automata.tech

CellVoyant:  info@cellvoyant.com