Stipple Bio Emerges with $100M Series A to Build Epitope-Level Cancer Therapies

Quiet companies don’t whisper, they load the chamber and wait. Stipple Bio just stepped out of stealth with $100M in a co-led Series A that did not need help getting filled. Oversubscribed. Which is a polite way of saying more money wanted in than they were willing to take. Cambridge keeps producing hitters, but this one is operating on a different layer of precision. Stipple Bio is not chasing targets, it is isolating epitopes, the exact molecular signatures that separate tumor from normal. That level of specificity is where therapies stop negotiating and start deciding outcomes. Wide shots miss. This is about hitting the only spot that matters.

Jeff Landau is running point as CEO, with Michelle Zhang as CSO shaping the scientific backbone and Andrew Lake as VP of Translational Biology making sure it holds up outside the lab. Founders Aaron Ring and Aashish Manglik built this with intent. Their work does not just inform the platform, it defines it. The Pointillist Platform is not a feature, it is the thesis. Map the right epitopes, build the right binders, and suddenly problems that looked untouchable start looking engineered.

STP-100 is the first real swing. An ADC built to avoid the industry’s favorite failure mode, on-target, off-tumor toxicity. Everyone claims precision until safety data shows up. This program is designed with that reality in mind, not as an afterthought. The plan is clear: push into early-stage clinical trials and build from a position of actual signal, not theory.

RA Capital, a16z Bio+Health, and Nextech Invest co-led the round, with Emerson Collective, GV, LoLa Capital, and GordonMD Global Investments doubling down. Derek DiRocco and Thilo Schroeder stepping onto the board is not window dressing, it is pattern recognition entering the room with a long memory for what works and what does not. That kind of alignment tends to extend runways and compress mistakes.

This is what gets overlooked. Capital did not just show up, it concentrated. Around a platform that compounds, a team that understands the edge they are working on, and a roadmap that points straight at clinical validation with runway stretching toward ~2029. No excess narrative, no inflated promises, just a tight build with very little margin for wasted motion. Stipple Bio is not trying to cover the board. It is picking a few precise squares and playing them with conviction. In oncology, that is not restraint. That is how you win.