companies

Emerald Cloud Lab

A remotely operated, fully automated wet lab that scientists program and run over the internet instead of building or renting physical bench space.

Emerald Cloud Lab grew out of Emerald Therapeutics, an antiviral biotech co-founded in 2010 by D.J. Kleinbaum and Brian Frezza, after the founders got frustrated automating their own experiments and decided the automation itself was the more interesting company to build. Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL) launched as its own offering in 2014: scientists ship samples to Emerald's facility — now in Austin, Texas after relocating from South San Francisco — and design and run experiments remotely through Emerald's software, using more than 200 pieces of scientific instrumentation without ever setting foot in the building. Experiments are defined through Emerald's own Symbolic Lab Language (SLL), which the company open-sourced, letting scientists specify protocols in structured, version-controllable code rather than a paper or PDF SOP. The company has raised roughly $150 million from investors including Founders Fund and OS Fund, and pitches the model as removing the capital cost of instrumentation and facilities for biotechs and academic groups, though the pricing — commonly cited around $25,000 a month with a one-year minimum commitment, for a roughly $300,000 entry cost — has been flagged in published academic commentary as a real barrier to the university labs it might otherwise serve best.

Founded

2014

Headquarters

Austin, United States

Sector

applications