C5R is building physical labs for AI models that still struggle with experiments
Founder Michael Akilian says the company formed five months ago to move AI out of virtual research and into biology, chemistry and materials science labs.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Primary source: X
Why it matters
C5R is betting that AI's scientific limits are partly an infrastructure problem: models need instrumented, real-world environments to plan experiments and learn from physical results.
C5R is building physical research facilities where AI models can plan and run experiments, an effort founder Michael Akilian (@akilian) says grew from a gap between advances in virtual AI and the limits he encountered at the lab bench. Akilian introduced the company in a September 24th thread on X, saying he began studying biology 18 months ago, first setting up a small apartment lab for worm experiments and later joining a lab at UCSF.…