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Phylo funding, valuation and investors
Agentic AI lab building an integrated biology environment (IBE) for biomedical research.
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Funding, valuation & investors
Answer-first snapshotLatest funding
Seed
$13.5M · February 2026
Latest known valuation
Not publicly disclosed
Total disclosed equity funding
$14M
Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.
Current status
private
seed · South San Francisco, CA
Investors in latest funding
Other: Andreessen Horowitz , Menlo Ventures
Overview
Phylo (Biomni Lab) builds an Integrated Biology Environment (IBE) — agentic AI for biomedical research from Stanford-affiliated founders Kexin Huang and Yuanhao Qu. The open-source Biomni project, used by 7,000+ labs, preceded the commercial Biomni Lab preview launched in February 2026. a16z and Menlo Ventures' Anthology Fund (with Anthropic) co-led a $13.5M seed. Scientific advisors include Carolyn Bertozzi, Feng Zhang, and Fabian Theis.
Why Phylo is interesting
Biomni author Kexin Huang spun out Phylo with advisors Bertozzi and Feng Zhang — a16z and Menlo's Anthology Fund co-led $13.5M for an AI-native lab workspace with 300+ bio tools.
Product & use cases
Biomni Lab — an Integrated Biology Environment where researchers orchestrate agentic AI across literature, protocols, data analysis, and lab workflows in one workspace.
- Automated literature review and protocol synthesis for biomedical research
- Multi-tool bioinformatics workflows orchestrated by AI agents
- Collaborative AI-native lab environment spanning computational and experimental planning
Key facts
- a16z portfolio status: Active
- Seed (Feb 2026): $13.5M co-led by a16z and Menlo Anthology Fund; Zetta and Conviction participated (Phylo blog / PRNewswire)
- Open-source Biomni used by 7,000+ labs before commercial Biomni Lab launch (GenomeWeb)
- 300+ integrated databases and bio tools including Consensus, COSMIC, and Addgene (Phylo blog)
Funding history (newest first)
Seed
2026-02 $13.5MSource: https://phylo.bio/blog/company-fundraising-announcement
Investors in our directory
Funds linked from Phylo's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.
Competitive landscape
Edge: Deep biology agent stack from the Biomni research paper authors plus elite scientific advisors — 300+ pre-integrated domain tools versus generic chat interfaces.
Phylo competes as AI-agent-native lab software versus incumbents bolting chat onto ELNs. Open-source Biomni community traction (7,000+ labs) provides adoption funnel; commercial Biomni Lab adds enterprise integrations.
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Benchling incumbent
R&D cloud and ELN for life sciences; adding AI features.
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FutureHouse adjacent
AI science agents focused on automated research tasks.
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Manual lab workflows alternative
Traditional fragmented tools; slower but familiar.
Notable stories
- Phylo spun out of the open-source Biomni project — first introduced June 2025 as a generalized biomedical AI agent — which Phylo continues to maintain for open-science research while commercializing Biomni Lab (GenomeWeb / Phylo blog).
- CEO Kexin Huang, first author of the Biomni paper, said AI-native biology requires an integrated environment unifying agent architectures with tools biologists actually use — modeled on AI-assisted software engineering workflows (PRNewswire).
Industries
Related funding articles
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FAQs about Phylo
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