Where is Phylo headquartered?

Phylo is headquartered in South San Francisco, California, USA. The company has a team of 2-10 people.

Phylo operates in the AI in Biotech / Drug Discovery sector. Applied AI research lab building Biomni Lab, an AI-native "Integrated Biology Environment" (IBE) that lets biomedical scientists orchestrate AI agents to accelerate research and drug discovery. Collapses fragmented, manual bioinformatics workflows into a single AI-native environment where scientists use natural language to move data between tools, run analyses, and get auditable, hallucination-checked results — compressing weeks-long workflows into hours.

When was Phylo founded?

Phylo was founded in 2025. It is based in South San Francisco, California, USA.

Who is the CEO of Phylo?

Kexin Huang is the CEO of Phylo. The company was founded in 2025.

Where is Phylo located?

Phylo is headquartered in South San Francisco, California, USA.

What funding stage is Phylo at?

Phylo is currently at the Early Stage stage.

How many employees does Phylo have?

Phylo has approximately 2-10 employees.

Phylo

Category: AI in Biotech / Drug Discovery

Applied AI research lab building Biomni Lab, an AI-native "Integrated Biology Environment" (IBE) that lets biomedical scientists orchestrate AI agents to accelerate research and drug discovery. Phylo was founded in 2025. The company is led by Kexin Huang. Based in South San Francisco, California, USA. Team size: 2-10. Total funding raised: $13.5M. Latest round: Seed. Key investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures (Anthology Fund, with Anthropic), Zetta Venture Partners, Conviction, SV Angel, Valkyrie.

Founded: 2025
Headquarters: South San Francisco, California, USA
Team size: 2-10
Total funding: $13.5M

Value proposition

Collapses fragmented, manual bioinformatics workflows into a single AI-native environment where scientists use natural language to move data between tools, run analyses, and get auditable, hallucination-checked results — compressing weeks-long workflows into hours.

Products and solutions

Biomni Lab (Integrated Biology Environment / IBE) — a ChatGPT-like workspace integrating 300+ databases, software systems, and analytical tools, supports custom AI agents, multi-GPU task distribution, 3D molecular visualization, and automatic hallucination review. Also maintains the open-source Biomni research agent.

Unique value

The first "Integrated Biology Environment" (IBE) — analogous to an IDE for software engineers — purpose-built for the scientific method, with agentic orchestration, traceability, and reproducibility across the full research workflow.

Target customer

Biomedical scientists in academia, biotech, pharma, and healthcare organizations (research labs, biopharma companies, hospitals).

Industries served

Biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, drug discovery, biomedical research, healthcare

Technology advantage

Built on Biomni, a popular open-source biomedical research agent adopted by 7,000+ labs and 18 of the world's 20 largest pharma companies; reinforcement learning-trained agents; integrates 300+ tools/databases; hallucination-checking and script-code transparency for auditability; distributes complex tasks across multiple GPUs.

How they differentiate

Unlike generalist chatbots/agents, Phylo's IBE is purpose-built for the scientific method — stateful, iterative, error-prone, and deeply contextual — with a biology knowledge graph, traceable reasoning, hallucination review, and deep integration of 300+ biology-specific tools and databases, positioning the human scientist as conductor.

Main competitors

Edison Analysis, OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude Code (Anthropic), Benchling (lab informatics platform)

Key partnerships

Ono Pharmaceutical (Biomni Lab deployment for discovery scientists, Jul 2026), Chugai Pharmaceutical (Biomni Lab across drug discovery workflows, Aug 2026), Ginkgo Bioworks (case study partner), Consensus (academic literature), COSMIC (cancer genomics), Addgene (plasmid discovery), academic collaborations with Stanford, scientific advisors Carolyn Bertozzi, Feng Zhang, Fabian Theis, backed by Menlo Ventures' Anthology Fund in partnership with Anthropic.

Notable customers

Ono Pharmaceutical, Chugai Pharmaceutical, Ginkgo Bioworks, 18 of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies (via Biomni adoption), 7,000+ research labs, biopharma and healthcare organizations

Major milestones

June 2024: Biomni project started at Stanford AI Lab, ~2025: Biomni open-sourced; bioRxiv preprint May 2025, Feb 3, 2026: Phylo launched Biomni Lab; $13.5M seed co-led by a16z and Menlo/Anthropic Anthology Fund, Jul 9, 2026: Biomni paper published in Science, Jul 28, 2026: Ono Pharmaceutical partnership — Biomni Lab for discovery scientists, Aug 4, 2026: Chugai Pharmaceutical partnership — Biomni Lab across drug discovery workflows

Growth metrics

Biomni open-source adopted by 7,000+ research labs and 18 of the world's 20 largest pharma companies; tens of thousands of scientists; Ginkgo Bioworks case study cut weeks-long workflows to hours.

Market positioning

Early-stage leader in the emerging "AI Scientist" / Integrated Biology Environment category, backed by top-tier investors (a16z, Menlo/Anthropic) and validated by broad open-source adoption across academia and pharma.

Geographic focus

United States (South San Francisco); global reach via open-source Biomni adoption across academia and industry

About Kexin Huang

Ex-Stanford CS PhD (advised by Jure Leskovec); first author of the original Biomni research paper; nearly a decade pursuing AI scientist concept across academia and applied AI. Co-founded Phylo after defending PhD in 2025.

Latest news about Phylo

AI startup Phylo secured 13.5 million dollars in seed funding co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and the Anthropic-backed Anthology Fund. Its platform, Biomni Lab, functions as an integrated biology enviro

More AI in Biotech / Drug Discovery companies

Official website: https://phylo.bio/