Fred Parietti, Multiply Labs CEO on Robotics and Biomanufacturing

Fred Parietti (0:00)

Oh, thank you, yeah.

Grace Gong (0:02)

Hi Fred, welcome to Venture with Grace.

Fred Parietti (0:06)

Hi Grace, thank you for having me.

Grace Gong (0:09)

I'm so excited about our conversation because who doesn't want to talk about robotics manufacturing for drag discovery.

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I want to dive into your background. Obviously, I feel like you came from a heavy research background from CIVU, MIT and before you started your own company. The company has already been around for over 10 years before robotics is a huge hot thing. I want to start with, and then also obviously, you guys are doing industry-leading automated manufacturing system to produce the next generation drug, and including sales R&B and a bunch of stuff. Maybe we could start from your journey on how do you get here and why this is important to you.

Fred Parietti (1:31)

Oh, yeah. Thank you.

I've always loved building robotic systems. From my point of view, I was always looking for excuses. What's the best excuse possible that authorizes me to build the best robots possible?

During my PhDs, I was still working on robotics for health care, but those were assistive robots. And what struck me then was that assistive robots are not really widespread in society, right? And so I just wanted to build robots that could actually reach and help more people, because from my point of view, I would be building robots anyways. So I might as well, you know, since I'm building them, I might as well build like, let's say, maximally useful robots. And so when I when I found when I met my my co-founder, Alice, and she told me how hard it is to manufacture advanced drugs, then I thought, well, that's a great application for robotics and looks like a great excuse to deploy the latest possible technology. And, you know, fast forward a few years, and now robotics is such a hot space. I mean, it used to not be that hot, right? We used to build robots because, you know, we believed in them, but everybody else was like much more into, you know, software or apps or whatever, right? And but right now, you know, there's this understanding for the first time that, you know, the next step of AI is the application to the physical world, which means robotics. And so for us, you know, the fact that now you can buy humanoid robots, you know, and they don't even cost that much. You know, we have all these robotic arms, you know, we have learning, you know, algorithms. I mean, this is what we, in general, as roboticists, and me in particular, this is what we always dreamed about building, except that now we can do it, right? And so it's great that it's almost like the real world caught up with what we were always wanting to do.

Grace Gong (3:55)

Okay, I love that. And I feel like it's super, oh my god, what's happening? Sorry, my bad.

I like actual physical wake up call. This is crazy. Okay, so I want to talk about like, so since I feel like you guys are doing both like robotics, but also like, you know, a sale therapy factory like before the age of like, you know, AI and robotics is happening. So I want to talk about like, you know, for someone who has like never seen a sale therapy factory, can you kind of like walk us through of like what people are doing manually today? And what is your robot like kind of like takeover?

Fred Parietti (4:31)

Yeah, honestly, like, it is so primitive how advanced biological drugs are made today, right? That it's actually shocking. Like, you would guess that the most advanced medicines are made in the same way, you know, as chips, right? Semiconductors, you would guess. I think that's what I thought. I thought, okay, there is a giant clean room. You know, everything is white, you know, and your people, you know, with like bunny suits, right? And mostly robots doing stuff. It is not like that at all. Like, honestly, like the state of biological bio-manufacturing today, by the way, what do I mean by bio-manufacturing? Like, you know, when you have to make a cell therapy, so a therapy that's made of cells, right? Or a gene therapy that contains maybe RNA or maybe someone else, something else, or maybe an antibody, right? These are things that are too hard to synthesize chemically. You know, you can't just start from the raw ingredients and create a cell or an antibody. Like, an antibody is like 20,000 atoms or something crazy, right?