Waypoint Bio Raises $20M Series A for CAR-T Trials in China

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Waypoint Bio, a New York City startup, has raised $20 million in a Series A round to run multiple cell therapy trials in China. The company plans to use the capital to advance three CAR-T trials in that market.

The round follows the company’s 2024 launch, when it came out of the gate with $14.5 million in seed funding led by Hummingbird Ventures. That earlier round drew participation from other institutional backers, including Recode Ventures, and pre-seed lead Fifty Years.

Waypoint’s platform combines spatial biology with pooled screening for drug discovery. The approach lets the company run initial screens of cell therapy designs in vivo while measuring hundreds of phenotypes at the single-cell level at the same time. The work is aimed at cell therapy for solid tumors, a difficult target in oncology.

The $20 million round marks a meaningful step up in funding for the company and is directed squarely at moving its cell therapy trials forward.