Automated cell‑culture market forecast

Growing living cells at scale is shifting from manual bench work to robots and software, and one widely cited forecast says that market could hit $23.96 billion by 2031. (mordorintelligence.com) Mordor Intelligence says the automated cell-culture systems market is worth $14.47 billion in 2026, up from $13.08 billion in 2025, and projects a 10.63% compound annual growth rate through 2031. The firms it lists as major players include Danaher, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Hitachi, Becton, Dickinson and Company, and Sartorius. (mordorintelligence.com) Cell culture is the routine job of keeping living cells fed, warm, sterile, and growing in dishes or bioreactors. Automated systems replace repeated hand steps such as seeding, feeding, monitoring, and harvesting with liquid handlers, incubators, sensors, and software. (thebusinessresearchcompany.com) That matters because cell-based medicines and biologic drugs are hard to make consistently by hand. The United States Food and Drug Administration says cell and gene therapies are regulated as biologics and require a Biologics License Application showing safety, purity, and potency before they can be marketed. (fda.gov) Manufacturing details can decide whether a therapy reaches patients. The Food and Drug Administration approved 46 novel drugs in 2025, while its separate list of approved cellular and gene therapy products shows a growing class of products that depend on tightly controlled production systems. (fda.gov, fda.gov) The pitch for automation is consistency. A 2020 review in *Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology* said automated pipetting and monitoring can improve precision, reproducibility, efficiency, and large-scale cell production. (frontiersin.org) The pitch is also contamination control. Cell-culture guidance from Abcam says cells need careful handling to prevent contamination and preserve viability, while a Florida State University safety document says contamination can waste time, money, materials, and entire experiments. (abcam.com, safety.fsu.edu) Vendors are already selling systems built around that promise. Sartorius says its Ambr 15 Generation 2 platform can monitor and control 24 or 48 microbioreactors inside a biological safety cabinet, and Beckman says its Ambr 250 platform is designed for 12 or 24 parallel mini bioreactors for cell-culture process development. (sartoriustr.com, beckman.com) Forecasts like this are directional, not a census, and other firms publish very different numbers for the same niche. But across those reports, the common bet is the same: more drug developers and research labs are paying to turn cell culture into a repeatable manufacturing process. (futuremarketinsights.com, researchandmarkets.com, mordorintelligence.com)