{"id":92473,"title":"b-12 - Chemistry Copilot for Pharma \u0026 Biotech","tagline":"Full Stack Chemistry Platform - from planning to robotic execution of experiments","body":"**TL;DR:**\n\nDrug discovery is slow, and it costs billions of dollars. The bottleneck in early discovery is chemical synthesis. b-12 is building a full stack of AI agents to deliver planning and robotic executions of experiments, in minutes, not months. **Our team has developed custom robots for chemistry (Chemspeed), orchestrated AI agents for lab control (EPFL \u0026 IBM), and is translating this into a powerful and easy-to-use product.**\n\n**Ask:** Are you running chemistry experiments or chemical robots? Do you know someone who is? Email us at [founders@b12-labs.com](mailto:founders@b12-labs.com) to be added to our pilot program. See below for details.\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmf7q-Sie2o\n\n# ❌ **The problem:**\n\n**Drug Discovery is slow:**\n\n* It takes 10+ years and over $2 billion to discover a new drug.\n* 2 in 10000 compounds make it.\n* Chemistry execution is very slow.\n\nExperiments take time! Designing good experiments and trial and error in the lab are big factors.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92473\u0026key=user_uploads/2507050/0cd3f202-e48b-48da-a6e5-3ae1572cddab)\n\n**Software for chemists is fragmented:**\n\n* There are many solutions for many different parts of the pipeline.\n* Tools are outdated, and integration is largely missing.\n\n**Lab robots are underused:**\n\n* Most lab robots are _not accessible to scientists_ because they are hard to use.\n* Drag and drop software for multimillion-dollar robotic labs.\n* Lab automation engineers are hard to find.\n\n**Current State:**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92473\u0026key=user_uploads/2507050/2a3d91a0-8e78-44d9-a89c-f1dcc7b45f67)\n\n**b-12:**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92473\u0026key=user_uploads/2507050/893d0cd2-d071-43be-b08e-ddf29b8aaddc)\n\n# ✅ **Our** **Solution:**\n\nWe are integrating a full stack of Agents to **design experiments** and **write code for the robot** that runs these experiments, with the tools and context needed to predict chemically meaningful results, and close the experimental loop.\\\n\\\n**Key capabilities of our Agents:**\n\n* **Streamline Experiment Planning**: Our tools accelerate creation of experimental details based on literature and expert tools, and tailor the output to the user’s specific needs.\n* **Unified platform:** Our platform integrates several agents that are in tight communication and can go from natural language input to robotic execution in minutes.\n* **No coding required - use natural language:** With arbitrary input flexibility, we can control the robot the same way you would talk to your lab-mates, including inputs from previous runs, and uploading relevant documents.\n* **Parallel and scalable to any lab:** We are vendor agnostic, and integrate with different robotics (Chemspeed, Unchained, Opentrons, etc.) and labs performing experiments manually.\n\n**Pilot Program:** Our team will work on integrating Agentic solutions tailored to your lab's specific problems, whether you use lab automation or not. We want to speed up molecular discovery.\n\n# **👥 Our Team:**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92473\u0026key=user_uploads/2507050/92133d6c-ba4b-4722-9115-8c45405366aa)\n\nWe are Zlatko and Andres, and in the past, we have:\n\n1. Worked with big pharma (Roche), Chemical Robotics ([**Chemspeed**](https://chemspeed.com/)), and big chemical data ([**MaxPlanck**](https://www.mis.mpg.de/));\n2. Pioneered [**AI agents**](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-024-00832-8) for chemistry and [**retrosynthesis**](https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08537) (at EPFL);\n3. Invented [**new chemistry**](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202211168);\n\nNow we want to integrate it into a seamless platform, where anyone who wants to run experiments gets extra **brainpower** and an **additional pair of hands**.\n\n# 🙏 Our Ask:\n\nDo you know anyone in chemistry working in the pharmaceutical or biotech industry?\n\nWe would love a warm intro!\n\nSend us an email at:\n\n[founders@b12-labs.com](mailto:founders@b12-labs.com) or send them to our website: [b12-labs.com](http://b12-labs.com)","slug":"O3V-b-12-chemistry-copilot-for-pharma-biotech","created_at":"2025-07-31T16:18:49.754Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T00:45:20.775Z","total_vote_count":36,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/O3V-b-12-chemistry-copilot-for-pharma-biotech","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=92473\u0026key=user_uploads/2507050/92133d6c-ba4b-4722-9115-8c45405366aa","company":{"id":30689,"name":"b12 Labs","slug":"b12-labs","url":"https://b12-labs.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/64c9b960693fdd85d6fb6be6fefc443ca4ab80af.png","batch":"Summer 2025","industry":"Healthcare","tags":["AI-powered Drug Discovery","Robotics"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30689"}}