b12 labs launches from Y Combinator
We’re excited to announce that b12 labs has officially launched as part of Y Combinator.
The problem we set out to solve
Drug discovery takes over a decade and costs billions of dollars. A huge part of that cost comes from chemical synthesis — the process of actually making and testing compounds in the lab. And yet, the software tools that scientists rely on are fragmented, outdated, and poorly integrated with the robotic hardware that’s supposed to speed things up.
We saw this firsthand. Between our work at Roche, Chemspeed, the Max Planck Institute, and EPFL, we kept running into the same bottleneck: labs have remarkable hardware, but the software layer forces scientists to become programmers just to use it.
Lab robots are expensive and powerful — but most of them sit underutilized because the barrier to operating them is too high.
What we’re building
b12 is a full-stack AI platform that combines experiment planning with robotic execution. Our system uses AI agents to convert natural language instructions into executable protocols — no coding required.
You describe your scientific goal in plain language. The agent handles the rest: designing the experiment, laying out the plate, generating machine-ready instructions, and orchestrating the execution.
We’re vendor-agnostic, working across platforms like Chemspeed, Unchained, Opentrons, and even manual lab setups.
Watch the demo
Our core tools
- Automation Copilot — translates natural language into machine-executable workflows for real instrument stacks
- Plate Designer — generates optimized reaction layouts from a conversational description of your scientific goal
- Synthesis Expert — an agentic retrosynthesis tool that helps chemists plan molecular pathways
The team
b12 was founded by Zlatko Joncev (CEO) and Andres M. Bran (CTO). Between us, we’ve worked at Roche, Chemspeed, the Max Planck Institute, and EPFL — where we published research on AI agents for chemistry and retrosynthesis. We started b12 because we believe the tools scientists use should be as capable as the science they’re doing.
What’s next
We’re working with early partners in pharma and biotech to validate these tools on real workflows. If you’re a chemist, automation engineer, or lab leader who’s tired of fighting your software, we’d love to talk.
Reach out at founders@b12-labs.com — or check out our YC launch page.