Druckenmiller family office invests in Cellares

Duquesne Family Office, the single-family office of billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, has participated in the $257 million Series D financing of Cellares, announced on January 28, 2026. The round was co-led by investment funds managed by BlackRock and Eclipse, bringing total capital raised by Cellares to $612 million. Duquesne invested alongside fellow new investors T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Baillie Gifford, Intuitive Ventures, EDBI, and Gates Frontier (the investment office of Bill Gates), with continued participation from existing backers including Willett Advisors (Michael Bloomberg’s family office), DC Global Ventures, and DFJ Growth. Cellares, headquartered in South San Francisco, is the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) for cell therapies, replacing manual, labor-intensive contract manufacturing with fully automated, GMP-compliant production. Its proprietary Cell Shuttle system delivers end-to-end, closed-system cell therapy manufacturing, while its Cell Q platform automates in-process and release testing — together providing up to approximately ten times higher throughput and lower per-patient costs compared with conventional CDMO facilities of similar scale. The Cell Shuttle has received the U.S. FDA’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology designation, which can enable expedited review of regulatory submissions incorporating the platform. Cellares has entered into a $380 million global manufacturing agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb, reserving commercial-scale capacity in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The Series D proceeds will fund the buildout of automated IDMO Smart Factories across South San Francisco, Bridgewater (New Jersey), Leiden (the Netherlands), and Kashiwa City (Japan). The company expects to support clinical manufacturing in the first half of 2026, with commercial-scale manufacturing beginning in 2027. CEO and co-founder Fabian Gerlinghaus stated the financing positions Cellares on a path toward becoming a public company.

About Duquesne Family Office: The Druckenmiller family office

Duquesne Family Office is the New York–based single-family office of Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the most successful macro investors in history. Druckenmiller, born in 1953 in Pittsburgh, graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1975 with a BA in English and economics before dropping out of a PhD program in economics at the University of Michigan to begin his career as an oil analyst at Pittsburgh National Bank. He founded Duquesne Capital Management in 1981 — named after a park in his native Pittsburgh — and from 1988 to 2000 served as lead portfolio manager for George Soros’s Quantum Fund, where the pair famously shorted the British pound sterling in 1992 during Black Wednesday, generating more than $1 billion in profits.

Duquesne Capital posted an average annual return of approximately 30% over nearly three decades without a single losing year before Druckenmiller closed the fund in August 2010, at which time it held over $12 billion in assets, citing the personal toll of managing outside capital. He subsequently converted the operation into Duquesne Family Office to manage his personal and family wealth. Bloomberg reported Duquesne managed approximately $10.8 billion in assets as of December 2024. Druckenmiller’s estimated net worth ranges from approximately $6.9 billion (Forbes) to $11 billion (Bloomberg Billionaires Index), derived primarily from his investment career. The family office’s publicly disclosed U.S. equity portfolio was valued at approximately $4.5 billion as of its most recent 13F filing, with significant concentrations in healthcare and life sciences — top holdings have included Natera, Insmed, and Teva Pharmaceutical — alongside positions across technology, financials, and commodities. Druckenmiller’s investment philosophy centers on macro trading, combining large directional bets on currencies and commodities with fundamental securities analysis, and he is known for cutting losses quickly while aggressively scaling winning positions. Beyond investing, Druckenmiller is a major philanthropist: in 2009 he donated $705 million to foundations supporting medical research, education, and anti-poverty initiatives, including a $100 million gift to establish the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. He serves as chairman emeritus of the Harlem Children’s Zone and is a founder and chairman of Blue Meridian Partners, which addresses economic and social mobility. He and his wife Fiona established the Druckenmiller Foundation in 1993, which held assets of $1.76 billion in 2023.

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Article Source: Cellares press release, 01.03.2026