San Francisco-based biotech YonedaLabs has secured $4.6 million in a seed round to build an automated lab capable of daily chemical reactions, which will be utilized for training and optimizing models.
- YonedaLabs, founded in 2023 by Czech Jan Obořil and Poles Michal Mgeladze-Arciuch and Daniel Vlasits, specializes in developing software to aid chemists in optimizing and predicting chemical reactions.
- The startup’s product, Yoneda Optimize, is an app that simplifies drug creation using statistical methods and AI. It allows users to design experiments quickly, optimize reactions, save time and money, eliminate guesswork, and find better conditions faster, generating iterative tests.
- The investment saw participation from Czech KAYA VC, American VC Khosla Ventures, California-based VC 500 Emerging Europe, Berlin-based tech investment firm 468 Capital, and Y Combinator.
- The startup plans to use the investment to build an automated laboratory capable of performing and analyzing hundreds of chemical reactions daily, equivalent to about twenty full-time chemists' performance