New funding will power foundational primary cell data generation to advance AI-driven discovery through the company’s full product launch.
MONTREAL and BOSTON, June 22, 2026 — DropGenie, a biotechnology company advancing next-generation gene editing workflows, today announced the closing of its Seed+ financing to support the launch of its first product. The round was led by Skeleton Key, with new investors Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and CQDM, and existing investors Real Ventures and Anges Québec continuing their strong support.
This funding will drive commercialization: scaling manufacturing, building commercial operations, and accelerating customer adoption. The rollout follows successful validation through DropGenie’s Early Access Program, with many major global pharma, biotech, and research customers already integrating the technology into their workflows.
DropGenie’s platform enables high-throughput, miniaturized gene editing workflows that reduce the number of cells and reagents required per experiment — lowering costs and accelerating editing turnaround time. This enables direct edits on primary patient cells, delivering more biologically relevant insights earlier in the R&D process.
“The most powerful insights in biology come from perturbations—changing one thing and watching how a living system responds. But capturing those signals with fidelity demands working at the right scale, in the right cells,” said Alison Hirukawa, CEO & Co-founder of DropGenie. “Our platform miniaturizes workflows and lowers cell requirements to enable direct editing of primary patient cells—giving researchers access to true biological readouts previously impossible to capture. This opens the door to faster, more predictive development across cell therapy, functional genomics, and beyond.”
“We find the DropGenie platform’s ability to reliably miniaturize and accelerate experimental workflows via automation to be extremely compelling,” said Ann Lai, Managing Partner of Skeleton Key. “Being able to capture every parameter variation of these complex gene editing experimental processes creates the data we need to fundamentally accelerate innovation and to better leverage AI beyond the theoretical discovery phases. This is exactly the kind of science technology Skeleton Key wants to support and see succeed.”
The Seed+ round powers DropGenie’s strategic data partnerships with customers to generate high-quality, standardized gene editing data. As industry demand grows for data infrastructure, DropGenie’s efficient process creates foundational datasets that fuel data-driven discovery in cell therapy and functional biology—producing datasets that capture true biology at scale.
About DropGenie
DropGenie advances next-generation gene editing through miniaturized, high-efficiency workflows. Based in Montreal and Boston, DropGenie enables direct edits on primary patient cells by dramatically reducing the number of cells required per experiment, delivering true biological signals and accelerating development across cell therapy, functional genomics, and AI-driven discovery. For more information on how we’re miniaturizing gene editing workflow, please visit https://dropgenie.com/
SOURCE DropGenie
