b-12 Labs 🧪

AI copilot for faster drug discovery

October 01, 2025

Spotlight

What if AI could compress the 10-year, multi-billion dollar drug discovery timeline into a fraction of the time?

Quick Pitch: b-12 Labs is a chemistry copilot that accelerates drug discovery for pharma and biotech. Its AI agents turn natural language goals into full experimental plans, then automate lab robots to execute them in minutes instead of months.

The Problem

  • Inefficient Discovery: Drug development takes more than 10 years and $2B, with only 2 in 10,000 compounds succeeding.

  • Fragmented Tools: Outdated, poorly integrated software creates workflow bottlenecks.

  • Wasted Capital: Costly lab robots sit idle because programming requires expertise most chemists lack.

Snapshot

  • Industry: Drug Discovery and Lab Automation

  • Headquarters: San Francisco, CA

  • Year Founded: 2025 (YC S25)

  • Traction: Paid pilots with major pharma companies

Founder Profiles

  • Zlatko Jončev, Co-Founder, CEO: Chemistry PhD, 10+ years as automation chemist at Roche and AI researcher at EPFL.

  • Andres Bran, Co-Founder, CTO: Built the first AI agent for chemistry, with experience in chemical data at Max Planck Institute and EPFL.

Funding

  • Current Round: Raising $2.8m (Seed)

  • Lead Investor: Y Combinator

  • Total Raised: $500K (Pre-Seed)

Revenue Engine

  • Model: Subscription software for pharma, biotech, CROs, CMOs

  • Market Size: $9B+ addressable market

  • Value Proposition: Compress 4 year chemistry timelines; blockbuster drugs like Keytruda ($24B annually) gain billions from faster delivery

What Users Love

  • Natural language control of complex lab robots, no coding needed

  • Works with multiple vendors (Chemspeed, Opentrons, Unchained)

  • End to end automation from design to execution

  • Reduces experiments from months to days

Playing Field

  • Legacy Software: Lacks integration and AI

  • Manual Processes: Trial and error experiments take months

  • Robotic Programming: Drag and drop tools still require specialists

b-12 Labs' Edge: A platform that understands chemistry, designs experiments, and executes them across diverse robotic systems.

Why It Matters

The chemistry phase is the biggest bottleneck in drug discovery. Faster chemistry means lower R&D costs and earlier access to treatments. AI can now generate thousands of potential molecules, but labs still need faster ways to test and validate them. The market is looking for tools that connect these steps, transforming AI concepts into real experiments and results.

What Sets Them Apart

  • End to end automation platform, not a single task tool

  • Founders with pharma, robotics, and AI backgrounds

  • Real world pilots showing 30x speed gains

  • Market tailwinds from AI designed molecules like Google AlphaFold

Analysis

Bulls Case 📈 

  • Tackles a clear pain point in a large market with ROI

  • Paid pilots with two major pharma companies show early traction

  • Experienced founders with target domain expertise

  • Platform model builds switching costs and expansion paths

  • Unlocks idle robotics investments

Bears Case 📉 

  • Early stage with limited revenue and customers

  • Must scale across varied labs and chemistry types

  • Long, complex enterprise sales cycles

  • Competes with entrenched workflows and vendors

  • Risk in maintaining broad robotic integrations

Verdict

b-12 Labs addresses a critical gap in drug discovery with a platform that combines AI and lab robotics. Early validation suggests product market fit potential, but success depends on scaling deployments, broadening integrations, and navigating pharma sales cycles.

If executed well, B12 could capture a share of a $9B+ market where faster time to market creates outsized value. For investors, the thesis is infrastructure arbitrage: converting idle robotics into productivity gains while shortening the most expensive phase of drug development.

The Startup Pulse

  • Judi Health — Rebranded from Capital Rx, raised $400M to expand health benefits beyond pharmacy.

  • Juicebox — AI recruiting startup raised $30M from Sequoia after reaching $10M ARR with four employees; clients include OpenAI and Ramp.

  • OpenAI — Partnering with Apple supplier Luxshare to build consumer AI devices, with launches planned for 2026–2027.

Written by Ashher

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