Medra has raised $52 million to advance its innovative integration of AI and robotic automation, creating “physical AI scientists” that enable flexible, natural language-driven automation of scientific experiments to accelerate drug discovery. Collaborating with biopharma leaders like Genentech, Medra plans to expand its team and build an autonomous lab with 100 robots to scale experimentation and enhance AI-driven research in life sciences.
Medra, a company focused on accelerating drug discovery, has raised $52 million to advance its innovative approach of integrating AI with robotic automation in laboratory environments. The company aims to empower scientists directly, not just engineers, to run experiments at scale through what they call “physical AI scientists.” These AI scientists enable researchers to automate scientific experiments flexibly and interact with the robotic systems using natural language, effectively co-piloting the design and execution of experiments.
Unlike traditional industrial automation, which tends to be rigid and brittle, Medra is pioneering a shift toward physical AI that can adapt and reason about scientific processes. This approach allows for more dynamic and scalable automation in life sciences labs, addressing the challenges of physically demanding and time-consuming lab work. The vision is reminiscent of the fictional AI assistant Jarvis from the Iron Man series, where an intelligent system interacts seamlessly with robotic mechanisms to enhance human capabilities.
Medra’s technology is not just about automating routine tasks but about automating the scientific method itself. Their AI can generate hypotheses, design experiments, and analyze the resulting data to optimize and refine scientific research continuously. This closed-loop system aims to accelerate discovery by enabling rapid iteration and learning, which is particularly valuable in drug development and other life science fields.
The company is collaborating with leading biopharma firms, including Genentech, to implement their “lab in the loop” concept. This involves integrating Medra’s physical AI scientists with the machine learning teams of their customers, allowing for the proposal and testing of new experimental ideas. The data generated by Medra’s robotic systems feeds back into machine learning models, creating a powerful synergy between AI-driven hypothesis generation and automated experimentation.
The $52 million funding will be used to expand Medra’s team across engineering, robotics, AI, hardware, software, operations, and go-to-market efforts. They plan to build and open an autonomous lab equipped with 100 robots next year to run experiments and generate data at scale. Medra aims to position itself as a leader in the US for this emerging field, driving innovation in drug discovery and life sciences through the integration of physical AI and robotics.