Opentrons raises $40 million Series E to push robots, not models, into the lab

A $40 million round with no valuation attached

Healthcare investor Avego led the $40 million Series E round. BroadOak Capital Partners also participated.

Existing investors include SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures, according to Pulse 2.0 and The AI Insider. Opentrons is based in New York City and was founded in 2014. That puts roughly a decade of lab automation sales behind this round. Opentrons did not disclose its valuation. It also did not disclose the ownership stakes investors acquired. Without those figures, the public cannot check whether Opentrons raised the $40 million above, at or below the price of the previous round. The silence leaves the price of the round unknown outside the company.

The bottleneck argument the round is built on

Opentrons argues that the physical lab, not the model, is now the constraint on experiments.

AI proposes experiments faster than labs can run them, the company says. The Opentrons Flex platform pairs laboratory robots with software and AI tools. Those tools are meant to design, run and refine experiments in a continuous loop. Each run through an Opentrons system produces structured, reproducible data that later AI cycles can use, according to the company. Opentrons says physical laboratory execution is an increasingly important bottleneck as models get faster at proposing experiments. "Millions of scientists spend much of their day on manual work a robot can do," CEO James Atwood said.

"Giving that time back to discovery is the biggest opportunity in science," CEO James Atwood said.

Where the money goes

Proceeds will fund AI-driven experimental execution and expanded automation capabilities. Opentrons calls its architecture open and API-driven.

The company also plans to enter new markets and geographies. It also plans to speed up protocol development and integrate its robots more deeply with third-party instruments and software. That framing matters for labs that already own its hardware. The promise is an upgrade path rather than a rip-and-replace. Opentrons says the money will also support additional automation across its robotics portfolio and deeper integration across laboratory systems. Protocol development is on the list, alongside the robots themselves. The company said the round will support expansion of its robotics, software and laboratory data infrastructure.

The installed base behind the pitch

Opentrons says it has deployed more than 11,000 robots in laboratories across more than 80 countries. Those are company figures. 90% of the 20 largest global pharmaceutical companies use its systems, according to Opentrons. The customer list also includes every top-20 U.S. research university and 14 of the 15 largest global biopharmaceutical companies. The announcement does not say how many of those installations are on paid service contracts. It also does not say how often the robots run. Its customers span pharmaceutical manufacturers, biotechnology developers, diagnostics laboratories and academic research institutions. Avego managing partner James Flexner said every AI-driven discovery still has to be tested in a real lab.

"Drug developers and AI companies alike are moving experimental work forward toward automated workflows that generate usable data," Flexner said.

What the announcement does not settle

Opentrons disclosed neither the valuation nor the investor ownership stakes. The funding announcement named no new customers. Opentrons did not give any revenue figures or a timeline for the new markets it plans to enter. It also did not quantify the claim at the centre of the funding round. Opentrons says its robots act as an execution layer that connects AI models to physical laboratory work. The funding announcement asserts that claim rather than measuring it. The announcement does not address whether the software upgrade path actually shortens experiments.