Timeline

How the field grew: cumulative initiatives by first public year, and every entry placed on the timeline.

Growth of self-driving labs

cumulative initiatives by first public year

1122026

founded cumulative +7 lab-automation roots before 2014

G generalizabilityS scalabilityD structured (meta)data Eras & milestones after Canty & Abolhasani, Nat. Rev. Chem. 2026 · CSS = collective scientific superintelligence ↗

20266

🇰🇷

KIER Smart Laboratory

Korea Institute of Energy Research · energy

SNU / Jung Lab · cross-domain

Operational

—

🇨🇳

AI-Assisted Materials Discovery Institute

Tsinghua University (Omar Yaghi) · materials

HZB + Fritz Haber Inst. (MPG) · chemistry

NSF + Astera Institute · cross-domain

Concept / Planning

$400M

🇸🇬

NUS AI4S · Materials Data Foundry

NRF Singapore · NUS I-FIM + U Toronto · materials

Concept / Planning

S$120M (NRF AI4S, 8 projects)

202513

Milestones

★ MINERVA D ELN/LIMS integration via OpenBIS — the data layer built in

🇸🇪

AURORA (KTH)

KTH Royal Institute of Technology · materials

University of Nottingham (Connor Taylor) · cross-domain

Operational

£2M (RAEng fellowship)

KAIST-POSCO Autonomous Lab

KAIST + POSCO · batteries

Operational

—

🇰🇷

KIMS Autonomous Alloy Lab

Korea Institute of Materials Science · materials

Periodic Labs · materials

Operational

Undisclosed VC

🇬🇧

Cenevo (Titian + Labguru)

Titian + Labguru merger · orchestration

UniteLabs · orchestration

Ewha IMMS Self-Driving Lab

Ewha Womans University / IMMS (NRL 2.0) · materials

Operational

KRW 114B (~$83M) / 10 yrs · MSIT+MOE+Ewha

🇩🇪

MINERVA (BAM)

BAM Berlin (Ruehle junior research group) · materials

Operational

—

🇺🇸

NSF AI Institute for Materials Innovation

Cornell-led (Princeton, CCNY, BU) · materials

Operational

$20M (NSF, 2025)

🇬🇧

UK ARIA AI Scientists

ARIA · cross-domain

Operational

£6M

202419

Milestones

★ MicroCycle S Integration with existing industrial (Novartis) infrastructure ★ RoboChem G Multiscale operation in flow — photocatalytic optimization and scale-up

MAITENA (CIC energiGUNE)

CIC energiGUNE · energy

Empa (Battaglia Lab, Materials for Energy Conversion) · energy

Argonne (CNM) · materials

Operational

—

🇨🇳

SurFF / Uni-MOF (Wang Group)

Tsinghua University · materials

ByteDance · drug-discovery

Operational

Corporate

🇺🇸

CMU AI Science Foundry

Carnegie Mellon · cross-domain

Operational

Federal+Univ

🇳🇱

Cusp AI (Amsterdam node)

Cusp AI (Amsterdam Science Park) · materials

Operational

Part of $520M val

🇬🇧

Cusp AI (Cambridge HQ)

Cusp AI (M. Welling co-founder) · materials

Operational

$100M+ Series A · $520M val

🇨🇳

Deep Principle 深度原理

Deep Principle · drug-discovery

Medra, Inc. (Michelle Lee) · drug-discovery

Operational

$63M total (Series A Dec 2025)

🇨🇭

Novartis MicroCycle

Novartis · drug-discovery

Radical AI (Gerbrand Ceder, CSO) · materials

Operational

$55M seed (2025, RTX + NVIDIA)

🇬🇧

SOLVE Chemistry

SOLVE Chemistry Ltd · chemistry

QPillars GmbH · orchestration

Operational

—

🇬🇧

AIChemy (UK AI for Chemistry Hub)

U Liverpool + Imperial (EPSRC) · chemistry

Operational

£12M EPSRC (+£19M partner)

🇩🇪

HELMA (Helmholtz Acceleration Alliance)

Helmholtz Assn (KIT lead) · cross-domain

Operational

Internal Helmholtz funding

🇰🇷

Korea 500 SDL Initiative

MOTIE AI+R&D Strategy · cross-domain

DOE (ARPA-E + CHIPS) · materials

Operational

$140M

20239

Milestones

★ AlphaFlow G Variable-process multistep nanoparticle optimization in flow ★ FINALES SD Decentralized experimental + simulation control; BattINFO ontology for data capture ★ A-Lab G Intensive solids handling — solid-state synthesis of complex powders ★ CoScientist GD LLM-based experimental design, planning, and execution ★ AMD Platform G Closed-loop multistep synthesis with automatic process rectification

🇺🇸

A-Lab

Berkeley / LBNL · materials

CMU (Gomes Group) · chemistry

Operational

—

🇺🇸

FutureHouse / Edison Scientific

FutureHouse (nonprofit) + Edison · biology

Prototype / Pilot

$70M (Edison, 2025, ~$250M val)

🇺🇸

Lila Sciences

Lila.ai · drug-discovery

Mattiq (ex-Northwestern, Mirkin) · materials

Automata · orchestration

AIST (Multi-Modal AI project) · cross-domain

Operational

—

🇨🇦

NRC BattMAP / BattPAP

National Research Council Canada · batteries

Operational

Federal (Critical Minerals Strategy)

202213

Milestones

★ Reconfigurable flow (Nambiar et al.) G Online reconfiguration of flow chemistry systems

🇨🇭

Aurora (Empa)

Empa (Battaglia Lab, Materials for Energy Conversion) · batteries

Operational

—

🇩🇪

CELEST Autonomous Battery Lab

KIT + Ulm + HIU · batteries

Tsinghua University · materials

Operational

—

🇨🇭

EPFL Self-Driving Lab (LIAC)

EPFL (ISIC / LIAC) · materials

IMDEA Materials Institute · materials

Operational

—

🇨🇳

Jun Jiang Group / ChemAgents + Robot Chemist

USTC Hefei (Jun Jiang) · chemistry

Ångström Advanced Battery Centre (ÅABC) · Uppsala University · batteries

ChemLex (Sean Lin) · drug-discovery

Operational

$45M (2025, Granite Asia)

🇩🇪

Dunia Innovations

Dunia (GigaLab, Berlin) · energy

Operational

€10.6M seed · €280M GigaLab

🇳🇱

Big Chemistry

Radboud (lead) + TU/e, Groningen, AMOLF, Fontys · chemistry

DTU + 4 universities · energy

CNRS + CEA (France 2030) · materials

Operational

€85M / 8 yrs

🇯🇵

RIKEN / IST Maholo SDL

RIKEN BDR + Inst. Science Tokyo (JST) · materials

Operational

~¥1.1B (~$7.3M JST)

20215

Milestones

★ AMANDA SD Multiplatform control architecture; data and hardware integration structuring

🇩🇪

AMADAP

FAU Erlangen · materials

Carnegie Mellon · cross-domain

Operational

—

🇰🇷

Grzybowski Group / IBS-CARS

UNIST + Polish Acad. Sci. · chemistry

Provincial (Ningbo) · chemistry

Operational

Government

202011

Milestones

★ Mobile Robot Chemist GS Extensibility through mechanical training; physical agent decoupled from apparatus scaling ★ CAMEO G Opt-in human collaboration; joint phase mapping and property optimization at the beamline ★ MAOSIC S First cloud-SDL demonstration — remote operation

Boston University (Keith A. Brown / KABlab) · materials

Chalmers (King Group) · biology

Prototype / Pilot

£1M

🇨🇳

MAOSIC (CUHK-Shenzhen)

CUHK-Shenzhen / AIRS (Xi Zhu) · materials

Shanghai AI Laboratory

National AI Lab · cross-domain

EPFL, ETHZ · chemistry

Fraunhofer ISC · materials

Battery2030+ consortium · batteries

UCLA + UCSB (NSF MIP) · biomaterials

Operational

$43.5M (DMR-1933487 + DMR-2445868)

🇺🇸

CAMEO (NIST)

NIST (Kusne) + synchrotron beamlines · materials

Operational

—

20197

Telescope Innovations

🇨🇳

Jiageng Innovation Lab 嘉庚创新实验室

Xiamen University / Fujian Province · materials

Culture Bio · biology

MegaRobo Technologies · cross-domain

~$300M (Series C/D)

🇨🇭

Atinary

Atinary · orchestration

Operational

Undisclosed

🇨🇦

Acceleration Consortium

University of Toronto · chemistry

Operational

$500M (CFREF+matched)

20189

Milestones

★ Chemputer G Device and protocol abstraction — chemistry digitalized as executable code

🇸🇬

AI4Mat Initiative | Hip Lab

NTU Singapore (Kedar Hippalgaonkar) · materials

Operational

S$35M (MTI + Mat-GDT)

🇬🇧

Cronin Group / Chemify

U Glasgow · chemistry

Science 2023: 312 molecules

🇬🇧

Ley Group

U Cambridge · chemistry

U Amsterdam · chemistry

Arctoris · drug-discovery

Operational

~$15M

🇨🇳

DP Technology / Bohrium 深势科技

DP Technology · materials

Operational

🇬🇧

Artificial

Artificial · orchestration

Operational

Undisclosed

20174

🇬🇧

Cooper Group / MIF Liverpool

U Liverpool (MIF, opened 2017; CMD forerunner 2007) · materials

Operational

£81M MIF (Unilever £25M + UKRPIF £11M)

🇳🇱

DIFFER Autonomous Energy Materials Discovery (Süleyman Er)

DIFFER (NWO institute) · energy

University of Toronto / Vector Institute · cross-domain

20162

Milestones

★ ARES OS D First major infrastructure package for SDL deployment; proper database organization of experimental data

🇺🇸

Unchained Labs (Stuntman)

Unchained Labs · orchestration

US Air Force Research Laboratory (Maruyama) · materials

Operational

—

20154

🇯🇵

NIMS Autonomous AI Network

NIMS + Tsukuba · materials

XtalPi (HKEX) · drug-discovery

HK$47B pipeline

20143

🇺🇸

Opentrons

Opentrons Labworks · cross-domain

Benchling · orchestration

Synthace · orchestration

Operational

Undisclosed

20131

🇺🇸

Strateos

Strateos · drug-discovery

Operational

20121

🇬🇧

IPRD

Institute of Process Research and Development · chemistry

Operational

>£15M / 5 years

20051

🇺🇸

HighRes + Opentrons

HighRes Biosolutions × Opentrons · orchestration

Prototype / Pilot

Partnership

19981

🇨🇭

Chemspeed / SciY

Bruker · cross-domain

Operational

Public (BRKR)

19951

🇨🇭

Tecan Group

Tecan (SIX: TECN) · cross-domain

Operational

Public (SIX)

19921

🇬🇧

Peak Analysis & Automation

PAA (Grenova) · cross-domain

Operational

Private

19801

🇺🇸

Hamilton Company

Hamilton · cross-domain

Operational

Private