Drylab Secures $3 Mn to Expand AI-Powered Scientific Research

The company will use the funding to expand its engineering and biology teams, strengthen enterprise sales, and obtain security and compliance certifications to support the adoption of its AI platform by pharmaceutical companies and research institutions.

Funding and Investors

The $3 million seed round was led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with PatSnap also participating in the round.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India invests in technology companies across the region and beyond. PatSnap, a provider of AI-powered innovation intelligence solutions, will support Drylab through its life sciences network, data, and AI capabilities.

How Drylab Plans to Use the Funding

Drylab plans to allocate the newly raised capital across three key areas:

• Team expansion: Hiring enterprise sales professionals and expanding its engineering and biology teams.
• Security and compliance: Obtaining certifications required by large research organisations to adopt AI solutions.
• Business growth: Supporting the adoption of its platform among pharmaceutical companies and biomedical research institutions.

The company launched commercially in February 2026 and has since signed paying customers across multiple research and healthcare organisations.

How Drylab's AI Scientists Work

Drylab is developing autonomous AI agents that can manage complex scientific research workflows, particularly in bioinformatics and biological data analysis.

The platform is designed to understand research objectives, plan analytical workflows, select appropriate scientific tools, execute analyses, interpret results, and troubleshoot errors with limited manual intervention.

Secure AI for Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Research

Data security is an important consideration for pharmaceutical companies and research institutions because their work often involves sensitive biological information and valuable intellectual property.

Drylab allows organisations to deploy its platform on private infrastructure or local workstations. This approach enables research teams to use AI-powered scientific tools within their own environments while maintaining control over their data and discoveries.

Founders and Leadership

Drylab was founded in 2025 by three co-founders:

• John Phan, Co-founder and CEO: Previously conducted AI research with ByteDance's Seed team.
• Huy Phan, Co-founder and CTO: Previously worked as a visiting research engineer at Andrew Ng's Landing AI.
• Nhi Nguyen, Co-founder and Chief Science Officer: A PhD candidate in biomedical science at Nanyang Technological University. Her experience teaching herself bioinformatics to analyse data from her own laboratory helped inspire the creation of Drylab.

About Drylab

Founded in 2025, Drylab is an AI company developing autonomous scientific research agents for the life sciences industry. Its platform supports scientific reasoning, bioinformatics analysis, and the development of AI models for biological research.

The company aims to help laboratories automate complex computational research while allowing scientists to retain control over research objectives, sensitive data, and intellectual property. By incorporating research data, experimental feedback, and institutional knowledge, Drylab seeks to develop AI scientists that become more useful as they support scientific workflows.

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