Medra Raises $52M for Autonomous Wet Labs

In December 2025, the life science robotics company Medra raised $52 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by Human Capital, with participation from Lux Capital, Menlo Ventures, Catalio Capital Management, and Neo.

The company is led by Founder and CEO Michelle Lee. Medra is building the first platform for “Physical AI Scientists”—autonomous robotic agents designed to execute messy, complex wet lab experiments without human intervention.

While AI has transformed drug discovery in silico (on computers), the physical validation in vitro (in labs) remains a slow, manual bottleneck. Medra addresses this by combining computer vision with robotics, allowing its system to use standard lab tools (like pipettes) and adapt to unstructured environments. Alongside the funding, Medra announced a strategic partnership with Genentech to deploy its robots directly into one of the world’s most advanced drug development pipelines.

The new capital will be used to construct a large-scale autonomous laboratory in the Bay Area and accelerate the deployment of its robots with biopharma partners.

Market Signal

• The Genentech Validation: The immediate partnership with Genentech signals that “Physical AI” is no longer a research project but enterprise-ready infrastructure. It validates the industry’s desperate need to close the loop between AI model predictions and physical lab results.
• Lead Investor Thesis: The round being led by Human Capital (known for scaling engineering teams) rather than a traditional bio-fund suggests Medra is being valued as a scalable “tech platform” rather than just a biotech service provider.
• Closing the “Sim-to-Real” Gap: Medra represents the “execution layer” for Generative Biology. As companies generate millions of protein candidates, only an autonomous, 24/7 lab workforce can physically test enough samples to feed the data hungry AI models.

Key Details

• Company: Medra
• Funding: $52M Series A
• Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
• Lead Investor: Human Capital
• Founder: Michelle Lee (CEO)
• Use Case: Autonomous wet lab robotics and Physical AI Scientists