Our Investment in Tetsuwan Scientific

Scientific breakthroughs suffer from a significant bottleneck due to the limited speed, throughput, and scalability of human scientific labor. Time spent pipetting at the bench takes away from data analysis, literature review, and the creative intellectual synthesis of new ideas that progress depends on.

Furthermore, the traditional manual processes often involved in scientific experiments can lead to variability and errors, impacting the overall quality and reliability of research outcomes. 

Automation in life sciences extends beyond saving time to scientists, by improving reproducibility with less human error and quicker data collection, bolstering research quality and efficiency.  

A Visionary Team to Build the Future

We met Cristian Ponce and immediately recognized his leadership qualities that make him a strong fit for a startup CEO: he is ambitious, driven, smart, and has both a boundless energy and a magnetic personality. He began college at 16, studying computer science at UNC Charlotte, before later finding his niche in bioengineering at Caltech, working on E. coli genomics in the Wang Lab. 

Cristian’s direct experience in research motivated him to tackle R&D inefficiencies. He found a partner in cofounder Theo Schafer, a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zürich & MIT, as well as commercial experience building autonomous robots for extreme environments at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Schafer’s path in science and engineering, taking him through EPFL, ETH Zürich, MIT, and NASA, all began with an educational YouTube channel he operated in his youth. 

Ponce’s motivation to improve research, combined with Schafer’s background in robotics, form a team dedicated to driving progress on the development of AI scientists. Together, they founded Tetsuwan Scientific to work towards this goal and change how we approach research in the life sciences.

We realized this was a special team not only through our initial zoom meetings. When we visited their Bay Area office, we were impressed that their functional voice-activated MVP worked exactly as advertised – both English and Spanish! During our diligence and since investing, we’ve learned this is a team driven to exceed expectations.

Building Intelligence for Lab Automation

Tetsuwan’s vision for lab automation aligns with ours: while many lab automation companies focus heavily on adding dexterity to new robots, Tetsuwan focuses on adding intelligence. 

The company is building Autonomous Scientific Agents that can perform a variety of scientific tasks autonomously, capable of reasoning, reacting to data and making decisions. This solution addresses the labor bottleneck by supplementing or replacing the need for human labor in repetitive and precision-demanding tasks, boosts the utilization of existing lab automation and supercharges innovation. 

Tetsuwan stands out by pioneering AI-driven robots that can adapt, make decisions, and manage themselves — a sharp contrast to its competitors who focus primarily on enhancing efficiency through workflow integration and optimization, and automating repetitive tasks that need consistent human oversight.  

Our Thesis on Lab Automation

We think now is the time for autonomous scientific agents, delivered through lab automation. The tech maturity of software and specifically AI has caught up to that of hardware, and ecosystem players from the government to pharma to other industry players are looking for increased accuracy and efficiency.

We are proud to lead the round in Tetsuwan Scientific, and to be joined by our friends at Carbon Silicon and Everywhere Ventures. We are grateful to Entrepreneur First for introducing us and for their role in introducing Cristian and Theo.

Learn more about Tetsuwan by reading their announcement in SynBioBeta or visiting the Tetsuwan Scientific website, or by following Cristian and Theo on LinkedIn.