Opentrons Labworks has raised $40 million in Series E funding to expand its robotics, software, and data infrastructure for AI-driven scientific experimentation.
Healthcare investment firm Avego led the round, with additional participation from BroadOak Capital Partners.
Existing Opentrons investors include SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures.
The company plans to use the financing to accelerate development of autonomous science systems in which AI models and laboratory robots can design, execute, evaluate, and refine experiments in an ongoing loop.
Opentrons has deployed more than 11,000 robots to laboratories across more than 80 countries.
Its technology is used by 90% of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies, according to the company, as well as every top-20 U.S. research university and 14 of the top 15 global biopharmaceutical companies.
The Opentrons Flex platform combines laboratory automation hardware with software and AI systems.
Each experiment performed through an Opentrons system generates structured and reproducible data that can be used by AI systems in subsequent experimental cycles.
The company sees physical laboratory execution as an increasingly important bottleneck as AI models become faster at generating scientific hypotheses and proposed experiments.
Series E proceeds will support AI-driven experiment execution, expansion of the company’s automation capabilities, faster protocol development, deeper integration across laboratory systems, and entry into new markets and geographies.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, Opentrons positions its open, API-driven robotics platform as an execution layer connecting AI with physical laboratory work.
KEY QUOTES:
“Millions of scientists spend much of their day on manual work a robot can do. Giving that time back to discovery is the biggest opportunity in science.”
James Atwood, Ph.D., CEO Of Opentrons
“Every AI-driven discovery still has to be tested in a real lab. Drug developers and AI companies alike are moving experimental work forward toward automated workflows that generate usable data.”
James Flexner, Managing Partner At Avego
