Parallel Bio

Using the immune system to cure disease

parallel.bio

HQ: Cambridge, MA, USA; Los Angeles, CA, USA

1-10

Healthcare

Company research

Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals

Updated Jul 29, 2026

Overview

Parallel Bio is a biotechnology startup building human-first drug discovery tools that use patient-derived immune organoids, AI, and lab automation to predict how therapies will perform in diverse human biology, reduce reliance on animal testing, and support pharma partnerships plus its own cancer and autoimmune drug pipeline.

Primary product

Clinical Trial in a Dish: a human immune organoid platform for drug discovery and preclinical testing.

Founded

2021

Headquarters

Brisbane, CA, United States (San Francisco Bay Area)

Team size

20-30

Industry

Biotechnology

Sub-industry

Drug discovery / human organoid preclinical testing

Offices

1000 Marina Blvd. Ste 105, Brisbane, CA 94005, United States

Karl-Farkas-Gasse 22, 1030 Vienna, Austria

200 Dexter Ave, Watertown, MA, United States

750 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Business model

B2B pharma partnerships

contract research / preclinical testing services

platform-enabled drug discovery

proprietary internal drug pipeline

Funding

Stage

Series A

Total raised

$25.6M

Latest round

Series A · Jun 2025

Latest amount

$21M

Series A

Jun 2025 · AIX Ventures

$21M

Seed Round

Dec 2022 · Refactor Capital

$4.3M

Accelerator / Incubator

Jul 2021 · Y Combinator

$325K

People & investors

Leadership

Robert M. DiFazio

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Juliana Hilliard

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Mary Clare McFadden

Director of Talent Acquisition

Amanda Merkelson

Director of Biobanking

Nathan Bandow

Head of Technical Operations

Christopher Riling

VP of Science

Tom Kruitwagen

Director, Stem Cell R&D

Jennifer Lee

VP of Finance and Operations

Investors

Work & culture

Mission-driven and interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on scientists and engineers working closely together; the company explicitly describes itself as building a team of 'dreamers and doers' and recently brought computational and biological teams together under one Bay Area roof.

Visa sponsorship

Limited

Compensation

Public job postings show high-end biotech compensation: Office Manager at $86K-$102K, Head of Sales at $160K-$190K with $260K-$340K+ OTE, Head of Platform at $255K-$284K, and Head of Biology at $280K-$305K. Some openings are marked US citizen/visa only, suggesting limited sponsorship.

Product & market

Pricing

Custom enterprise/B2B partnership pricing for pharma testing and preclinical discovery work; public pricing is not disclosed.

Differentiators

—Human immune organoid platform instead of animal models
—Population-scale donor diversity across 170+ donors
—AI plus robotics plus wet-lab closed-loop automation
—Reported 87% concordance with human outcomes
—Claims 10x faster drug discovery and 1000x lower cost
—Supports both partner testing and internal pipeline creation
—Focus on human immune biology and diverse patient backgrounds

Technology

Databricks

Snowflake

Benchling

Python

SQL

Docker

Linux

Google Workspace

Slack

Zoom

1Password

lab automation

robotics

AI/ML

MLOps

cloud infrastructure

Customers

Pharmaceutical companies

Eight pharmaceutical partners

Three Fortune 500 companies

Centivax

Competitors

ImmunityBio

Atara Biotherapeutics

Scale & contact

Estimated revenue

$1M-$10M

bd@parallel.bio

Signals & risks

Other

Feb 2026

A company leader posted that Parallel Bio's San Diego team/site was recently closed due to a shift in business priorities.

Source

Latest news

We're (re)planting our flag in the Bay Area

Parallel Bio blog · Jun 2026

The company said it unified computational and biological teams under one Bay Area roof and highlighted new advisors and hiring in the region.

Parallel Bio Establishes San Francisco Bay Area as U.S. Headquarters, Appoints Five Industry Leaders to Advisory Board

Business Wire · Jun 2026

Parallel Bio said it was centering U.S. operations at its San Francisco Bay Area headquarters in Brisbane, CA, and named five advisors spanning immunology, AI, drug development, and cybersecurity.

We joined the 2026 WEF Technology Pioneer community because better science alone won’t fix drug development.

Parallel Bio blog · Jun 2026

Parallel Bio said the World Economic Forum named it a 2026 Technology Pioneer and described its human lymph node organoid platform and regulatory thesis.

Parallel Bio's embraces in-house drug development as FDA backs animal testing alternatives