Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem are you solving?
Felix Steinbrenner, Co-Founder & Co-CEO: Cellbyte is an AI platform for pricing & market access (P&MA) in the pharmaceutical industry. Our mission: to accelerate the global market launch of medicines. We enable experts to answer complex questions about clinical data, HTA decisions, price references, and regulatory requirements within seconds.
Today, P&MA teams spend countless hours manually researching, comparing, and preparing information from very heterogeneous sources. This is exactly where Cellbyte comes in: we automate these time-intensive work steps and deliver precise, evidence-based analyses – faster, more reliably, and significantly more efficiently.
Munich Startup: But that already exists, doesn’t it?
Felix Steinbrenner: Many tools collect or visualize data, but no existing product understands the context, logic, and regulatory dependencies in market access as deeply as our AI-native platform.
What makes Cellbyte special:
- We connect over 100 relevant data sources in a single unified platform.
- Our AI enables scalable analysis of contextual information from more than 30,000 documents.
- The platform was developed specifically for P&MA with deep expert knowledge, not as a generic AI tool.
In short: the market had many databases, but no intelligent system that truly understands the complex decision-making processes in market access. That’s exactly the gap we’re closing.
Deep industry expertise meets technical know-how
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Felix Steinbrenner: The idea for Cellbyte emerged from Daniel’s work at life sciences consulting firm Simon-Kucher. There, it became clear every day how enormously time-consuming and error-prone it is to gather information from clinical studies, HTA procedures, and price lists.
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. 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. We recognized the enormous potential and, at the same time, how large the unmet need in the market was.
That’s how Cellbyte was born: a combination of deep industry expertise, technical know-how, and our shared determination to rethink market access.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Felix Steinbrenner: Building an AI platform in a highly regulated environment has been demanding from the start. We had to simultaneously:
- meet the highest data quality requirements,
- create completely transparent data flows,
- establish robust compliance processes,
- and win the trust of an industry that rightfully scrutinizes very carefully.
At the same time, the data landscape is extremely heterogeneous: clinical endpoints, HTA logic, pricing rules, and regulatory documents follow completely different formats and patterns. The technical challenge of unifying all this information in an AI-native way was significant, but that’s exactly where our technological strength emerged.
Goal: Global reference platform for market access
Munich Startup: Where do you want to be in one year, and in five years?
Felix Steinbrenner: In one year, we want to have firmly established Cellbyte as a leading AI platform for pricing & market access in Europe and the United States. We’ll continue to expand our team, launch more deeply integrated workflows, and anchor our technology even more strongly in the daily work of our users.
In five years, we want to be the global reference platform for market access – a system that harmonizes pharmaceutical, regulatory, and economic data worldwide and enables experts to conduct complex workflows with AI support and maximum transparency. Our vision is clear: medicines should reach the patients who need them faster.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Felix Steinbrenner: Munich is an ideal location for us. Proximity to strong pharma and biotech companies, excellent universities, and a growing tech ecosystem creates exactly the mix we need. We also benefit from access to talent in AI and data, as well as from an active investor scene.
Munich combines international ambition with a strong scientific foundation – very fertile ground for an AI startup in the healthcare sector.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Felix Steinbrenner: A bit of both. We solve an extremely specific, yet globally relevant problem. That makes us a hidden champion in a niche that has enormous influence on healthcare. At the same time, we’re experiencing strong international momentum right now: increasing demand, growing customer base, and major technological leaps.
When you put both together, we like to describe ourselves this way: a hidden champion that’s just becoming a shooting star.
