AI startup Phylo gets $13.5 million for its “integrated biology environment”

Biology software developer Phylo Inc. announced today that it has raised $13.5 million in seed funding.

Andreessen Horowitz led the round with Anthology Fund, a $100 million investment vehicle created in 2024 by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic PBC. Zetta, Conviction, SV Angel and several others also contributed.

Biologists use many applications to process scientific data produced by their laboratories. These applications are often not compatible with each other, which creates technical challenges. Loading experimental results from one program to another often requires scientists to manually reformat the data or loop it to a bioinformatics expert.

Phylo promises to make workflow easier. The startup offers an artificial intelligence application called Biomni Lab that allows data to be automatically moved between different software tools. Additionally, it provides a ChatGPT-like interface that allows biologists to centrally access their tools without opening multiple tabs.

Phylo refers to Biomni Lab as an integrated biology environment. The term is a nod to integrated development environments, or IDEs, that programmers use to write software. An IDE combines a code editing interface with debugging tools, a compiler that turns code into working programs, and other features. Biomni Lab’s chatbot interface provides access to 82 biology tools, 68 databases and more than 100 software packages.

Biologists can instruct the tool to perform research tasks by entering natural language commands. For example, a scientist could upload data on the chemical composition of a protein and ask Biomni Lab to simulate the shape of the protein. It is possible to customize details such as which AI model the tool should use to generate predictions about protein shape.

If the user-specified search task is particularly complicated, Biomni Lab can distribute it across multiple graphics cards to speed up processing. If necessary, it visualizes the output data for easier analysis. The tool can generate not only graphics but also three-dimensional models of objects such as molecules.

Once Biomni Lab generates treatment results, it automatically reviews the results for hallucinations. If some of the results were obtained by running a script written by the AI, the platform displays the script code to facilitate manual verification. The interface displays a natural language explanation of each problem detected.

Biomni Lab is based on an eponymous open source project released last June. According to Phylo, the project has been adopted by more than 4,300 organizations, including 18 of the 20 largest global pharmaceutical companies. The company says its software allowed one early adopter, Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings Inc., to complete some cellular analysis tasks in hours instead of weeks.

Phylo offers core Biomni Lab features via a free cloud service with daily usage limits. The company generates revenue with a paid edition that includes additional cybersecurity controls, support for custom AI agents, and other enhancements.

“Today, the cognitive overload of switching tools, reformatting data, and managing transfers constantly interrupts scientific thinking,” Menlo Venture partner Matt Kraning wrote in an article. blog post. “Phylo compresses this loop. A question that would have taken days to configure can be explored in an afternoon.”

Photo: Menlo Ventures