Automata has closed a $45 million Series C funding round to accelerate development of its integrated automation platform designed to support AI-driven life sciences research. The round was led by Dimension, with participation from Danaher Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners, Octopus Ventures, Entrepreneurs First, and others, alongside a strategic investment partnership with Danaher Corporation.
The London-based company is focused on addressing a growing gap between advances in artificial intelligence and the physical execution of laboratory experiments. While AI has transformed computational biology, many wet labs continue to rely on manual, fragmented workflows that limit scalability and reproducibility. Automata’s platform combines modular robotics, orchestration software, and unified data infrastructure to enable what it describes as autonomous, programmable laboratories.
“AI-first biology requires fundamentally different infrastructure,” said Mostafa Elsayed, CEO of Automata. “We're building the operating layer between AI models and the physical lab—enabling labs to run autonomously rather than as bespoke workshops.”
Automata reports that it now counts five top pharmaceutical companies among its customers, with growth driven by repeat deployments and large-scale automation partnerships. According to the company, customers have seen improvements in experimental throughput, reproducibility, and resource efficiency across pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and research environments.
The Series C capital will be used to scale customer deployments globally, expand engineering and product teams, and build the next iteration of Automata’s data and closed-loop experimentation software. The company has positioned this software layer as a foundation for self-serve, AI-driven drug discovery, where experiments can be designed, executed, and iterated with minimal manual intervention.
“Scalable, software-defined lab operations are foundational to the AI wave in life science,” said Nan Li, Founder and Managing Partner of Dimension. “Automata is building the technology stack to power modern labs.”
A key component of the round is Automata’s strategic partnership with Danaher. The collaboration is intended to integrate Automata’s automation and software platform with Danaher’s portfolio of laboratory instruments, reagents, and software, including technologies from Molecular Devices and Beckman Coulter Life Sciences.
“Advancements in robotics and automation, AI, compute, and instrumentation are powering the next wave of biological insights,” said Murali Venkatesan PhD. “We are proud to partner with Automata to accelerate customer workflows across drug discovery and development.”
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