As far as we know, Sleeper Simulant is one of IKELOS weapons, designed for Guardians' hands. It's also known, that IKELOS and Seventh Seraph weapons and solar splash damage thanks to Wrath of Rasputin mod (and void splash damage due to this season's Warmind's Decree mod) are able to spawn Warmind Cells.
For reference, average amount of weapon kills needed to spawn a cell is five red-bar combatants (or even less if we kill only orange-bar combatants or use solar splash damage on group of emenies).
However, Sleeper Simulant can't spawn cells even after five kills despite being an IKELOS weapon.
Is it just a bug? Or was Sleeper Simulant not designed for Warmind Cell generation?