Drylab AI raises $3m seed from Vertex to put AI agents in pharma labs

Drylab AI raises $3m seed from Vertex to put AI agents in pharma labs

13 October 2026: Drylab AI, a Singapore company that builds software agents to carry out scientific research with little supervision, has raised 3 million US dollars in seed funding led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, with Patsnap taking part. The company says it has worked with pharmaceutical companies, cancer centres and research institutions in the US, Europe and Asia since its platform launched in February.

Not yet independently verified. The company's own announcement is a short LinkedIn post, and its website carries no news. The product details, quotes and use of funds come from The Business Times. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The round was announced on the company's LinkedIn page on 13 October, the same day The Business Times reported it from Singapore.

Agents that choose their own tools

Drylab's pitch is research agents that work from an objective rather than from step-by-step prompts. According to The Business Times, the agents work out a strategy, pick from "more than 800 integrated scientific tools and databases" to run the analysis, interpret the results and troubleshoot failures on their own. The company says it trained its model on real scientific analysis runs, including the decisions and methodological mistakes made in them, so that it learns to correct its own work.

In its own post Drylab describes the longer aim as "self-improving intelligence": software that captures knowledge from each workflow and becomes more useful with every experiment a lab runs through it.

Built to run inside the customer's network

The platform can be deployed in a drug company's or research institute's own infrastructure, so that data and findings stay inside. For a regulated industry that is often the first question a buyer asks of any AI tool, and it shapes the use of the money: besides more engineers, biologists and sales staff, Drylab says the round will pay for the security and compliance certifications large research organisations require before they buy.

"Our vision is to bring that capability into the daily work of a highly regulated industry like biopharma, through a swarm of autonomous AI agents working alongside researchers," said co-founder and chief executive John Phan, as quoted by The Business Times. He added that the funding would help build "locally deployed intelligence" that moves scientists from biological questions to validated discoveries faster.

The team and the investors

Phan leads the company with Huy Phan as chief technology officer and Nhi Nguyen as chief science officer. The Business Times pictures them with Genping Liu and Benedict Tan of Vertex Ventures.

Patsnap, the other investor, sells patent and research intelligence software; The Business Times describes it as a unicorn, and we list it as a company profile.

Drylab has not disclosed a valuation, and neither its post nor the report names a customer.

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• China moves to restrict 23 AI technologies and wants exports registered
• US Treasury widens outbound investment curbs to biotech and four more countries

Sources

• Drylab AI on LinkedIn: seed funding announcement, 13 October 2026
• The Business Times: AI agent platform Drylab AI raises US$3 million seed round from Vertex Ventures and PatSnap, 13 October 2026