Phylo, a Stanford spinout, closed a $13.5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures to launch Biomni Lab, an AI‑enabled integrated biology environment that automates experiment planning, execution and data analysis. The founders—Kexin Huang and Yuanhao Qu—took Biomni from open‑source roots to a commercial product pitched to accelerate wet‑lab workflows and reduce turnaround times on complex assays. Investors including a16z and Menlo signaled confidence in AI tools tailored to biological research, highlighting early use cases with Ginkgo Bioworks where multi‑step analyses were compressed from weeks to hours. Backers say the platform aims to be an AI “co‑pilot” for biologists and to integrate with existing lab informatics ecosystems.