Healthcare IT · Pharma pricing and market access
Cellbyte
A Munich AI startup that wants to replace the spreadsheets, consultants and legacy databases pharma companies use to price and launch new drugs. It closed a $2.75 million seed round in November 2025 and says it has already signed Bayer.
A question with a price tag
“What price can we achieve for our new drug in the U.S. versus Germany?” is the kind of question Cellbyte says its AI agents are built to answer. It sounds like a small thing. Inside a pharmaceutical company it can take a team of analysts weeks, working through clinical trial data, health technology assessment (HTA) rulings, and price lists across dozens of countries, to get a defensible answer.
Cellbyte pitches itself as software that connects more than 100 data sources and scans more than 30,000 documents so that a pricing and market access (P&MA) team can ask that kind of question directly, in natural language, and get a sourced answer back.
The problem: drug launches run on PDFs
Getting a drug approved is only half the job. After approval, a manufacturer still has to set a launch price in every country, prepare HTA and reimbursement dossiers, and defend those prices to payers. Cellbyte's seed investor Pace Ventures put it bluntly: “Pharma R&D has been transformed by data and automation, commercialization has not. Drug launch pricing, reimbursement, and market access still run on PDFs, PowerPoints, Excel files, and consultants.”
Cellbyte's own account of the market, repeated across its funding announcements, is that pharmaceutical companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on databases and consulting to answer these questions, and that a drug's path to market can stretch past a year because of it. Those figures are the company's own framing of the problem; Healthcare Discovery did not independently verify the industry spend numbers.
Three founders, one pivot
Cellbyte was founded in 2024 by Daniel Vidal Moreira, Felix Steinbrenner and Samuel Moreira, according to the company's funding announcements. Daniel spent six years at Simon-Kucher, a global pricing and market access consultancy, where he worked the exact workflows Cellbyte now automates. Samuel holds an MSc in Information Systems from the Technical University of Munich and built enterprise AI systems as an ML engineer at Celonis; Pace Ventures' investment writeup also credits him with systems engineering experience at Amazon.
Felix is the operator. Before Cellbyte, he co-founded and ran operations at Glocally, a same-day parcel delivery startup that went through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch, used only electric vehicles, delivered more than 150,000 parcels for clients including H&M, and raised more than $2 million from YC and other investors, per Felix's own YC founder profile.
“In parallel, Samuel and I had already built a startup with Glocally and knew how to scale data-driven processes. When it became clear that Glocally might need a pivot, we began discussing more intensively as a trio,” Felix Steinbrenner told Munich Startup Platform. “The decisive moment came at the end of 2022 when it became apparent how early AI models like GPT-3.5 could structure complex pharmaceutical documents in seconds.”
A recycled company shell
That pivot shows up in the public record. Cellbyte GmbH is registered at the Amtsgericht München under HRB 270504. Corporate registries northdata and unternehmensverzeichnis.org both show that the entity was previously named Glocally Technologies GmbH, at a different München address, before it became Cellbyte GmbH. Northdata's earliest indexed filing for the entity is dated September 29, 2021, which is three years before the 2024 founding date the company gives for Cellbyte. Names of the current managing directors and the company's shareholder are held behind northdata's paid tier and were not available in the free record.
Seed round and first customer
On November 18, 2025, Cellbyte announced a $2.75 million seed round led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Pace Ventures, Saras Capital and Springboard Health Angels. The company said it had reached six figures in annual recurring revenue within weeks of launching and had signed contracts with “global pharmaceutical brands such as Bayer.” Bayer is the only customer named in any source found; Healthcare Discovery could not independently confirm the relationship beyond the company's own statement.
Frontline Ventures partner William McQuillan framed the round as a bet on global ambition from the outset: “Felix, Samuel and Daniel have set their sights globally from day one, and we're proud to support them as they expand into the US, accelerating patient access to new treatments.”
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate registration | Cellbyte GmbH, Amtsgericht München HRB 270504. Registered address Westenriederstr. 10 to 12, 80331 München. | Public record |
| Entity history | Same legal entity previously traded as Glocally Technologies GmbH, at Elisabethstr. 91a, 80797 München. Earliest indexed filing September 29, 2021, predating the company's stated 2024 founding. | Public record |
| Management and ownership | Northdata lists 3 managing directors and one known shareholder for Cellbyte GmbH but does not disclose names outside its paid tier. | Not found |
| Seed round amount | Company and most press report $2.75 million, led by Frontline Ventures, announced November 18, 2025. Munich Startup Platform's separate November 25, 2025 piece reports the same round as “seed funding of 2.4 million euros.” | Differs across outlets |
| Named customer | Bayer, described only as having “secured contracts with global pharmaceutical brands such as Bayer.” No named contact, contract value or scope given. | Company-stated |
| Security certifications | Company website claims GDPR compliance, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2. No certificate or auditor named. | Company-stated |
| Regulatory or clinical record | No FDA 510(k) or PMA record, no registered clinical trial, no NIH or NSF award, and no PubMed listing found for Cellbyte. | Not found |
| SEC filings | No Form D was found under Cellbyte's name in SEC EDGAR as of September 25, 2026. | Not found |
Read plainly: what is confirmed by a public register is that Cellbyte GmbH exists, is registered in Munich, and was once a different company. Everything about the product working, the Bayer relationship, the revenue growth and the exact seed amount comes from the company and its investors, repeated near word for word across several outlets that appear to be running the same press release rather than reporting independently.
What to watch
- Whether Cellbyte or a US affiliate ever files a Form D with the SEC as it expands into the United States.
- Whether the $2.75 million and 2.4 million euro figures for the same round are ever reconciled.
- Named customers beyond Bayer, and any public confirmation from Bayer itself.
- Whether the company triples headcount as planned with the new funding.
In their words
“In parallel, Samuel and I had already built a startup with Glocally and knew how to scale data-driven processes. When it became clear that Glocally might need a pivot, we began discussing more intensively as a trio.”
Felix Steinbrenner, co-CEO and co-founder, Munich Startup Platform interview, 2026 · Interview
“The decisive moment came at the end of 2022 when it became apparent how early AI models like GPT-3.5 could structure complex pharmaceutical documents in seconds.”
Felix Steinbrenner, Munich Startup Platform interview, 2026 · Interview
“The success of a drug’s entire lifecycle is decided in its launch sequence. Insights derived from gigabytes of accurate, up-to-date information are needed to make the best decisions for a launch.”
Felix Steinbrenner, co-CEO and co-founder, seed round announcement, Nov 18, 2025 · Company release
“Based on my years in Life Science Consulting, I’ve seen countless innovations transforming clinical development. Yet in Pricing and Market Access, decisions still too often rely on manual work and anecdotal evidence even though information is so abundant.”
Daniel Moreira, co-CEO and co-founder, seed round announcement, Nov 18, 2025 · Company release
“Cellbyte is tackling one of pharma’s biggest bottlenecks with an AI-driven strategy. Felix, Samuel and Daniel have set their sights globally from day one, and we’re proud to support them as they expand into the US, accelerating patient access to new treatments.”
William McQuillan, Partner, Frontline Ventures, seed round announcement, Nov 18, 2025 · Investor
“AI budgets in pharma are exploding, but almost all the focus has gone to discovery, not commercialization. The launch layer is still waiting for its infrastructure company.”
Luka Nićin, Pace Ventures, investment writeup, Nov 18, 2025 · Investor
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordCellbyte GmbH, Munich, Amtsgericht Munich HRB 270504
- Public recordCellbyte GmbH company entry, formerly Glocally Technologies GmbH
- Public recordCellbyte GmbH credit report
- IndependentCellbyte: AI accelerates market access for pharma
- IndependentSeed funding for Cellbyte
- IndependentCellbyte raises $2.75m to slash drug launch timelines with AI
- IndependentCellbyte with 2.75 million US dollar seed round
- IndependentCellbyte raises $2.75M to cut pharmaceutical drug launch timelines in half
- IndependentCellbyte Raises $2.75M to Accelerate Drug Launches with AI-Native Platform
- InvestorWhy We Invested in Cellbyte
- CompanyCellbyte: AI Agents for Pharma Drug Launches, YC company and launch page
- CompanyCellbyte seed round announcement
- CompanyCellbyte homepage, platform and security overview
- CompanyCellbyte about page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
