What are the current funding trends in cell therapy?

All funding deals in the cell therapy market over the last years

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Cell Therapy Market.

Is cell therapy funding actually up in 2026?

Cell therapy funding is slightly higher in 2026, but the bigger story is that fewer companies are raising while the typical round has become much larger.

After correcting the XellSmart currency-conversion issue, we calculate about $1.03 billion of observable funding from January 1 through the end of our research period. That puts 2026 roughly 5.7% above the comparable 2025 total of $974.7 million, while remaining about 7.6% below the $1.115 billion recorded over the same period in 2024.

The number of financings is moving the other way. We tracked 44 deals this year, versus 49 in 2025 and 46 in 2024. The number of separate companies receiving money fell more sharply, from 49 last year to 40 today.

Round size explains the difference. The median financing has reached roughly $24.5 million, up from $13.39 million last year and $11.7 million two years ago. Cell therapy investors are writing much bigger checks to the companies they choose to back, without expanding the pool of funded startups.

One data correction deserves attention. XellSmart disclosed RMB500 million across its C/C+ financing package. A database conversion put that at roughly $22.5 million, which does not match the announced renminbi figure. We therefore use approximately $72.6 million and count the package once. OriCell's later cumulative pre-IPO announcement remains part of the activity record, but we do not add its entire disclosed amount again because the overlap with the separately announced $70 million January financing cannot be established cleanly.

Amount disclosure is also better this year. We have usable financing amounts for 42 of 44 deals, compared with 39 of 49 in 2025 and 38 of 46 in 2024. That gives us more confidence in the round-size shift than in any comparison based only on headline capital.

Market measure	2026 YTD	2025 YTD	2024 YTD
Deals	44	49	46
Unique companies	40	49	44
Observable capital	≈$1.030B	$974.7M	$1.115B
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	≈$721.1M	$442.7M	$300.1M
Capital excluding >$100M rounds	≈$914.2M	$642.7M	$365.1M
Median round	$24.5M	$13.39M	$11.7M
Average priced round	$24.53M	$24.99M	$29.33M
Largest usable round	$116M	$115M	$325M
Companies raising more than once	4	0	2
First-financing share	9.1%	12.2%	28.3%

Would cell therapy funding still look stronger without the biggest rounds?

Yes. Once the largest cell therapy rounds are stripped out, the improvement in 2026 actually becomes clearer.

Removing every financing above $50 million leaves approximately $721 million of observable capital. That is around 63% more than the $443 million recorded over the comparable 2025 period and roughly 140% more than in 2024.

The result holds with a $100 million cutoff as well. We still get about $914 million this year, versus $643 million in 2025 and $365 million two years ago.

Only one usable financing crosses $100 million: BrainChild Bio's $116 million Series A. Even after correcting XellSmart into the $50–100 million range, just four transactions exceed $50 million.

The concentration numbers make the change easier to see. The five largest usable rounds account for roughly one-third of 2026 funding. Their share was around 55% last year and 73% in 2024. Two years ago, removing a handful of huge financings gutted the market total. These days, there is much more capital sitting underneath the top deals.

Are cell therapy rounds really getting bigger?

Yes. The typical cell therapy financing has become dramatically larger, even though fewer deals are closing.

The median round has moved from $11.7 million in 2024 to $13.39 million in 2025 and about $24.5 million now. That is an increase of roughly 83% in a year and more than a doubling in two years.

Interestingly, the average round has barely moved. It sits at roughly $24.5 million, almost identical to 2025 and below the $29.3 million average in 2024. Earlier periods had more extreme outliers. What changed in 2026 is the middle of the distribution.

The $20–50 million range is where the shift becomes obvious. We count 25 financings in that bracket this year, close to 60% of all priced rounds. There were 10 during the comparable 2025 period and only two in 2024.

At the same time, nine-figure rounds have become rare. We found four $100 million-plus financings in 2024, five in 2025 and just one so far this year.

The market now looks much less polarized between small startup rounds and giant biotech financings. $20 million, $25 million and $30 million checks are unusually common.

Why are so many cell therapy companies raising $20–50 million?

Many of the cell therapy companies raising money today have already moved beyond the earliest company-building phase and need enough capital to fund clinical trials, manufacturing and later development work.

The clustering is visible across several businesses. iRegene Therapeutics completed financings of roughly $31 million and $38 million during the period. Hopstem Biotechnology announced a Series C first closing around the $30 million range. Simnova Biotherapeutics raised approximately $29.5 million at Series B, while BriSTAR Immunotech raised more than RMB200 million in its Series C.

Those checks are hardly enormous by biotech standards, but they are very different from the smaller Seed-heavy financings that appeared much more often two years ago.

Public company announcements also show where the cash is going. BrainChild Bio's $116 million Series A is supporting a pivotal Phase 2 CAR-T study in pediatric brain cancer. Regend said its RMB350 million Series C would help move stem and progenitor-cell therapies through clinical development and toward commercialization. iRegene linked its latest financing to clinical programs, manufacturing scale-up and international development. Hopstem similarly said its Series C would fund clinical work and commercial-scale manufacturing preparations.

Stage labels can be misleading here. BrainChild Bio is technically raising a Series A while already running a pivotal registrational program. A financing like that has very little in common with the Series A of a company still trying to prove its original scientific concept.

Are investors backing fewer cell therapy companies more aggressively?

Yes. Cell therapy funding is reaching a smaller group of companies, and several of those companies are coming back for additional capital within the same year.

We found 40 separate funded companies across 44 transactions. Last year, 49 deals went to 49 different businesses. Four companies in our 2026 dataset raised more than once.

That creates an interesting split. Deal-size concentration has fallen because the market depends less on a handful of giant financings. Company concentration has gone the other way because fewer businesses are receiving money at all.

The easiest way to describe the market today is that investor appetite looks deeper but narrower. Companies that have already survived earlier financing and development milestones can often raise meaningful rounds. Far fewer new names are entering the funded population.

Are new cell therapy startups getting squeezed out?

New cell therapy companies have become much less visible in the funding data.

Only four of the 44 transactions we classified this year are first financings. We found six during the same period in 2025 and 13 in 2024. Their share of deal activity has fallen from 28.3% two years ago to 12.2% last year and 9.1% now.

The amount of money going into that first-financing cohort has dropped too. We calculate roughly $47.2 million this year, compared with $60.1 million in 2025 and $78.6 million in 2024.

Follow-on rounds show the reverse pattern. There are 39 of them in the current dataset, with a median financing of about $24.8 million. Deal count is slightly below last year, but the normal follow-on round is much larger.

We would be careful about turning that into a claim that investors are deliberately shutting out new startups. Financing-history classification is imperfect, especially for private companies with earlier rounds that were never publicly announced. Still, the multi-year decline is large enough to be meaningful.

Financing measure	2026 YTD	2025 YTD	2024 YTD
First financings	4	6	13
First-financing share	9.1%	12.2%	28.3%
First-financing capital	$47.2M	$60.1M	$78.6M
Median first financing	$10.25M	$12.0M	$5.0M
Follow-on financings	39	43	33
Follow-on share	88.6%	87.8%	71.7%
Follow-on observable capital	≈$958.5M	$914.6M	$1.036B
Median follow-on financing	≈$24.8M	$13.6M	$13.8M

Is cell therapy funding moving toward more mature companies?

Yes. The funded cell therapy population is noticeably more mature than it was two years ago.

Seed now represents seven transactions, or 15.9% of activity. There were 18 Seed deals in the comparable 2024 period, representing 39.1% of the market. Series C has moved in the opposite direction, reaching eight deals this year after four in each of the previous comparable periods.

The change becomes clearer if we remove deals with unknown stages. Among financings where we can establish a stage, 54.1% are Seed or Series A today and 45.9% are Series B or later. In 2024, the split was 73.8% early stage and 26.2% later stage.

Company age points in the same direction. The median funded company is about six years old, compared with four years in 2024. Within the current dataset, median age rises from around four years at Seed to five at Series A, seven at Series B and nine at Series C.

Series A remains the largest single stage by number of transactions, so early-stage cell therapy financing is still very much alive. The difference is the mix. Much less of today's market revolves around very young Seed companies, while a growing share of capital supports businesses with several years of technical and clinical history behind them.

Stage	2026 deals	2026 share	2025 share	2024 share
Seed	7	15.9%	18.4%	39.1%
Series A	13	29.5%	26.5%	28.3%
Series B	7	15.9%	14.3%	10.9%
Series C	8	18.2%	8.2%	8.7%
Series D+	1	2.3%	6.1%	2.2%
Growth Equity	1	2.3%	2.0%	2.2%
Unknown	7	15.9%	24.5%	8.7%

Is CAR-T the hottest part of cell therapy funding right now?

CAR-T is the clearest cell therapy category gaining real breadth today.

We tracked 15 CAR-T transactions in 2026, up from 10 last year and four in 2024. Its share of all cell therapy financings has climbed from 8.7% two years ago to 20.4% and then 34.1%.

Observable CAR-T funding is approximately $431 million, around 42% of corrected market capital. The median financing is close to $24.8 million, versus $21 million last year and $14.5 million in 2024.

BrainChild Bio's $116 million Series A is the largest round in our dataset, but the category's growth goes well beyond that deal. OriCell announced a $70 million Series C1 financing, Leman Biotech raised close to RMB200 million, and a wider group of Chinese CAR-T developers also closed mid-sized rounds.

The deal count is what makes CAR-T stand out. Funding has expanded across multiple companies rather than simply being inflated by one exceptional financing.

There is also a clinical explanation for some of the attention. CAR-T development is moving beyond its original blood-cancer stronghold into solid tumors, pediatric brain cancers and new manufacturing approaches. Those programs are still risky, but several have reached stages where investors are financing actual clinical execution rather than an early scientific thesis.

What is happening in regenerative, allogeneic and engineered cell therapy?

Outside CAR-T, the picture is much more mixed: regenerative cell therapy is holding its deal count while round sizes rise, whereas allogeneic and engineered immune-cell funding has become narrower.

We count 14 regenerative cell therapy financings, compared with 16 in both previous periods. Deal volume has therefore changed little.

Round size has changed a lot. The regenerative median is approximately $24.3 million, up from $12 million in 2025 and $10 million in 2024.

Several deals sit right around the new market middle. Regend Therapeutics raised RMB350 million in Series C funding. iRegene completed two substantial financings. Hopstem's latest round also falls around the $30 million level.

Total observable regenerative capital is approximately $260 million, below the $313 million recorded last year. The category has fewer signs of expanding breadth than CAR-T, but established regenerative-medicine companies are clearly able to raise larger rounds.

Allogeneic therapy has followed another path. Deal count has moved from nine in 2024 to eight last year and six now. After correcting XellSmart's financing, observable capital still reaches roughly $141 million, with the company's C/C+ package accounting for a large part of it. The median usable round is around $15.9 million, below the market-wide median.

Engineered immune cells are more concentrated again. We count five deals this year, down from 11 in each of the previous two periods, while observable capital has increased to roughly $141 million. The median round is around $28.8 million.

There is no single story for non-CAR-T cell therapy. Regenerative medicine has fairly stable activity with much bigger normal rounds. Allogeneic funding has lost breadth. Engineered immune-cell investors are backing far fewer companies but putting considerably more money into the ones that still get financed.

Why has China become so important in cell therapy funding?

China has become the dominant geography in our cell therapy dataset, and the change is visible across dozens of deals rather than one blockbuster round.

Chinese companies account for 28 of the 44 financings we tracked, or 63.6%. That compares with 19 of 49 last year and 12 of 46 in 2024.

Observable Chinese capital has risen even faster. After correcting the XellSmart conversion, companies based in China represent roughly 69% of the capital we can measure this year. Their share was about 22% in 2025 and only around 5% two years ago.

The company mix helps explain the shift. OriCell is pushing solid-tumor CAR-T programs through global clinical development. XellSmart is developing off-the-shelf iPSC-derived neurological cell therapies. Regend, Hopstem, iRegene, BriSTAR, Leman and several other Chinese companies have raised the kind of $20–50 million rounds that now dominate the overall market.

Domestic institutional money is prominent too. Qiming Venture Partners and the Beijing Medical and Health Care Industry Investment Fund each show up repeatedly among disclosed leads or co-leads. XellSmart has also attracted large state-linked funds alongside private investors.

China's rise combines more funded companies, larger mid-market rounds, more mature programs and a deeper domestic investor base. All four are showing up at once.

Is North American cell therapy funding losing momentum?

North American cell therapy financing has lost a large amount of deal breadth this year.

We count seven North American transactions, compared with 16 during the comparable 2025 period and 21 in 2024. The region's share of global activity in our dataset has fallen from 45.7% two years ago to 32.7% last year and 15.9% today.

Observable capital has dropped from approximately $955 million in 2024 and $699 million in 2025 to about $241 million.

That does not mean North American investors have stopped funding ambitious cell therapy programs. BrainChild Bio still raised $116 million, the largest usable deal we found anywhere this year. Secretome Therapeutics also closed a $30 million Series A to move its cardiac progenitor-cell program toward later-stage development.

The bigger issue is the number of companies getting financed. North America can still produce very large rounds, but far fewer separate financings are showing up than one or two years ago.

Are the same investors taking over cell therapy funding?

No small group of investors appears to be taking control of cell therapy financing, although strategic investors are participating in fewer rounds.

A disclosed lead or co-lead is available for 34 of the 44 transactions in our 2026 dataset. We identify 49 separate disclosed lead investors, compared with 47 last year and 33 in 2024.

Only a few names recur. Qiming Venture Partners and the Beijing Medical and Health Care Industry Investment Fund each appear three times as a disclosed lead or co-lead, while Apricot Capital appears twice.

Better disclosure explains some of the increase in investor count, so we would avoid reading too much into the exact numbers. Still, the funding records do not show a tiny club of venture firms dominating the market.

Strategic investors have actually become less common. We identify verified strategic participation in eight transactions, or 18.2% of deals, versus 13 deals last year and 10 in 2024.

When strategics do participate, the rounds tend to be fairly large. Their median financing is roughly $28.9 million, compared with $21.3 million in 2025 and $22 million two years ago.

Most of that participation sits in areas already attracting broader capital. CAR-T accounts for half of this year's strategic-backed transactions, while regenerative therapy represents another substantial share.

Corporates do not explain the jump in overall round size. The shift is broader: financial investors, government-linked capital, specialist healthcare funds and strategic investors are all financing a smaller, more mature group of cell therapy companies.

What do the biggest cell therapy rounds tell us?

The largest cell therapy deals show a market focused heavily on clinical execution, without depending on a long list of $100 million-plus financings.

BrainChild Bio is the only usable transaction above $100 million. After that, the market drops quickly through the $50–75 million range and into a dense cluster around $30 million.

That shape looks very different from 2024, when a $325 million financing and several other nine-figure deals dominated the observable total.

The companies near the top are also quite varied. CAR-T, regenerative medicine, allogeneic therapies and engineered immune cells are all represented. China supplies most of the companies immediately below BrainChild Bio in the ranking.

Company	Financing date	Stage	Category	Usable amount
BrainChild Bio	Sep. 8, 2026	Series A	CAR-T	$116.0M
XellSmart	Mar. 2026	Series C/C+	Allogeneic	≈$72.6M
OriCell Therapeutics	Jan. 12, 2026	Series C	CAR-T	$70.0M
Regend Therapeutics	Feb. 11, 2026	Series C	Regenerative	≈$50.6M
iRegene Therapeutics	Jul. 2, 2026	Series C+	Regenerative	≈$38M
iRegene Therapeutics	Jun. 1, 2026	Series C1	Regenerative	≈$31.0M
Secretome Therapeutics	May 27, 2026	Series A	Allogeneic / progenitor-cell therapy	$30.0M
Hopstem Biotechnology	Aug. 10, 2026	Series C	Regenerative	≈$29.6M

Could 2026 become a record year for cell therapy funding?

A record year is still possible, but the current data does not justify projecting one confidently.

Corrected observable capital through the research cutoff has reached roughly 72% of the full-year 2025 total and around 71% of the 2024 total. There is enough time left for either figure to be matched, but biotech financing comes in bursts, so simply annualizing the current pace would create false precision.

Deal count gives another reason to stay cautious. The 44 transactions completed so far equal only 58.7% of the 75 deals recorded in all of 2025 and 64.7% of the 68 transactions recorded in 2024.

Whether the final annual total sets a record is almost secondary to what has already changed underneath it. The current market has fewer enormous financings, many more $20–50 million rounds and much larger follow-on deals. Those changes are already visible without making assumptions about what happens later in the year.

So what is actually changing in cell therapy funding?

Cell therapy funding is becoming more intensive rather than more widespread.

The headline amount has moved only modestly versus last year, while both deal count and the number of funded companies have fallen. The companies that do raise money are generally receiving larger checks.

The strongest part of the market sits below the megarounds. Even after excluding every deal above $50 million, current funding remains far ahead of the comparable totals from both previous years. Large financings help, but they no longer carry the entire market.

A much bigger middle has emerged as well. Two years ago, $20–50 million transactions were unusual. They are now the dominant financing bracket.

Capital is increasingly going to companies that already have some history behind them. First financings are scarce, follow-ons dominate the dataset, Seed has lost share and the median funded company is older. Investors currently seem much more comfortable financing clinical progress, manufacturing and execution than creating a large new generation of cell therapy startups.

CAR-T has the clearest increase in breadth. Regenerative medicine has moved differently, with fairly stable deal volume and much larger typical rounds. Engineered immune-cell funding has become more concentrated.

Geography has changed dramatically too. China now accounts for most of the financings in our dataset and a large majority of observable capital, while North American deal activity has contracted sharply.

The strongest claim we can make today is narrower than saying the entire cell therapy ecosystem is booming. Fewer companies are raising, new-company financing remains weak and some of the growth comes from businesses that have simply matured into more capital-intensive stages.

What has genuinely improved is the amount of financing available to cell therapy companies that have already made it into the investable middle of the market.