A hand-curated map of where self-driving lab work is happening: national programmes, academic groups, commercial vendors, and lab-OS platforms.
Self-Driving Labs (SDLs) close the loop between AI-driven hypothesis, automated synthesis, and online characterisation. This list catalogues the people, programmes, and platforms doing the work. It captures the landscape as I read it, not as it indexes itself. Entries reflect public information as of June 2026 and are continuously revised through the interactive map.
- 🌍 National Programmes & Consortia
- 🎓 Academic Groups
- 🏭 Commercial & Industrial
- 🛰 Lab OS & Orchestration
- 📐 Data Schema
- 🛠 Local Development
- 🤝 Contributing
- 📜 License
Large public-sector or trans-institutional SDL programmes with national or pan-regional scope.
- Acceleration Consortium - 200-member global consortium anchoring 30+ self-driving labs for sustainable materials and molecules across health, energy, and electronics (Toronto, Canada · CAD 500M+ CFREF + matched).
- Big Chemistry - Dutch National Growth Fund consortium of five institutes (Radboud lead, TU/e, Groningen, AMOLF, Fontys) building AI-guided self-driving labs for sustainable industrial formulations (Nijmegen, Netherlands · €207.5M NGF).
- BIG-MAP / FULL-MAP - Battery2030+ flagship Materials Acceleration Platform for battery interfaces. BIG-MAP closed Feb 2024; successor FULL-MAP runs 2025-2029 (Brussels, EU · €19.95M Horizon Europe).
- BioPACIFIC MIP - NSF Materials Innovation Platform at UCSB and UCLA offering free peer-reviewed access to automated, AI-driven synthesis and characterisation of bio-derived materials (Los Angeles, USA · $43.5M NSF DMR).
- CAPeX Pioneer Center - Danish 13-year Pioneer Center accelerating Power-to-X catalyst and material discovery across DTU, Aalborg, Stanford, SLAC, Utrecht, and Toronto (Lyngby, Denmark · €40M / 13 yrs).
- DiscoveryLabNL - Dutch shared infrastructure linking DIFFER and three TU/e institutes for autonomous materials discovery, targeting NWO LSRI submission in 2027 (Eindhoven, Netherlands · €30M planned).
- HELMA (Helmholtz Acceleration Alliance) - KIT-led Helmholtz consortium positioning Germany's autonomous SDLs for health, energy storage, catalysis, and electronics in smart data centres (Karlsruhe, Germany · internal Helmholtz funding).
- Korea 500 SDL Initiative - MOTIE's October 2024 AI+R&D Strategy commits Korea to 500 autonomous laboratories by 2030 across nanomaterials, catalysis, organic chemistry, and bioengineering (Seoul, Korea · $320M by 2035).
- NUS AI for Science (AI4S) - Singapore's National Research Foundation AI4S programme (launched June 2026); NUS leads four of eight inaugural projects, anchored by the Materials Data Foundry (Novoselov + Aspuru-Guzik, I-FIM) building an open AI-and-robotics autonomous lab to link synthesis protocols to real-world material performance (Singapore · S$120M NRF).
- PEPR DIADEM - France 2030 programme run by CNRS, CEA, and seven academic partners, funding 51 projects that fuse AI with synthesis and characterisation across France (Paris, France · €85M / 8 yrs).
- UK ARIA AI Scientists - ARIA programme funding 12 AI Scientist projects testing autonomous hypothesis-to-experiment systems across drugs, batteries, quantum dots, and biology (London, UK · £6M / 9 months).
- US DOE National Labs - US federal SDL funding through ARPA-E's $40M catalyst programme and CHIPS R&D's $100M semiconductor-materials programme for autonomous chemistry and electronics discovery (Washington DC, USA · $140M total).
- NSF AI Institute for Materials Innovation - First NSF AI institute dedicated to materials, coordinating closed-loop autonomous experimentation across Cornell, Princeton, CCNY, and Boston University (Ithaca, USA · $20M NSF).
- NRC BattMAP / BattPAP - National Research Council Canada self-driving labs for battery-materials discovery and critical-mineral processing under the Critical Battery Materials Initiative (Mississauga, Canada · federal).
- AIChemy (UK AI for Chemistry Hub) - £12M EPSRC national hub (Liverpool + Imperial) developing AI-planned robotic and autonomous chemistry, including mobile robot scientists for exploratory synthesis (Liverpool, UK · £12M EPSRC).
- RIKEN / IST Maholo SDL - JST-funded national self-driving lab (Maholo robotic-arm platform) for closed-loop materials discovery, with a prototyping lab at RIKEN BDR Kobe and a demonstrator at Institute of Science Tokyo (Kobe, Japan · ~¥1.1B JST).
- AIST AUTOkobo - AIST's Multi-Modal AI lab-automation initiative for autonomous experimentation, now spanning all seven AIST research departments (Tsukuba, Japan).
- ASCEND - BMFTR-funded consortium led by Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and the Fritz Haber Institute (with BASF, Siemens Energy, Dunia Innovations, and TU Berlin/BasCat) running AI-guided self-driving labs, high-throughput characterisation, and digital twins to accelerate catalyst discovery for sustainable chemistry (Berlin, Germany · €30M / 5 yrs).
Single-institution or PI-led groups operating SDLs in the lab.
- A-Lab - Closed-loop robotic synthesis, characterisation, and ML-driven decision-making for inorganic solid-state materials, targeting 10-100x faster discovery (Berkeley, USA · LBNL).
- Abolhasani Lab - Self-driving fluidic lab combining microreactor flow chemistry, robotics, and AI to accelerate perovskite quantum dots and energy-relevant materials (Raleigh, USA · NC State).
- AMADAP - Brabec group platform spanning high-throughput synthesis, SPINBOT spin-coating, and the AMANDA device line to autonomously discover emerging photovoltaic materials (Erlangen, Germany · FAU + HI-ERN + FZJ).
- CMU Cloud Lab - Remote-access 24/7 facility with 200+ instruments letting researchers anywhere design and run autonomous chemistry, biology, and materials experiments (Pittsburgh, USA · Carnegie Mellon).
- Cooper Group / MIF Liverpool - Andy Cooper's mobile robot chemists roam the Materials Innovation Factory, autonomously running photocatalyst, porous-material, and CO₂-capture experiments (Liverpool, UK · £81M MIF).
- Coscientist - LLM-driven agent from Gabe Gomes' group that reads literature, plans syntheses, and controls liquid-handling robots from natural-language prompts (Pittsburgh, USA · CMU).
- Cronin Group / Chemify - Glasgow group behind the Chemputer and chemputation: synthesis encoded as executable code on universal robotic platforms, commercialised through spinout Chemify (Glasgow, UK · U Glasgow).
- DeepH (Duan Group) - Tsinghua physics group developing DeepH, a universal neural-network DFT Hamiltonian model accelerating electronic-structure prediction across arbitrary material structures (Beijing, China · Tsinghua).
- DIFFER Autonomous Energy Materials Discovery (Süleyman Er) - Computational group screening energy materials (redox-flow electrolytes, electrocatalysts) via high-throughput DFT plus ML over public chemical databases (Eindhoven, Netherlands · NWO institute).
- dLab - Hitosugi-group digital lab chaining thin-film synthesis with XRD, Raman, conductivity, and optics for fully automated standardised materials data (Tokyo, Japan · U Tokyo).
- Doyle Group - UCLA catalysis group fusing nickel cross-coupling, photocatalysis, and machine-learning reaction optimisation through founding roles in BioLEC and C-CAS centres (Los Angeles, USA · UCLA).
- Genesis - Ross King's third-generation Robot Scientist programme pursuing fully automated hypothesis generation and testing across biology and chemistry (Gothenburg, Sweden · Chalmers).
- Grzybowski Group / IBS-CARS - IBS Center for Algorithmic and Robotized Synthesis pairing AI retrosynthesis (Chematica/Synthia) with closed-loop chemical robotics (Ulsan, Korea · UNIST + Polish Acad. Sci.).
- Hein Lab / Telescope Innovations - UBC spinout commercialising self-driving process-chemistry platforms (IvoryOS, DirectInject-LC) for pharma, critical minerals, and Acceleration Consortium partners (Vancouver, Canada · UBC).
- Jensen Lab - MIT ChemE group integrating flow reactors, robotics, online analytics, and machine learning into autonomous platforms for reaction discovery and process development (Cambridge MA, USA · MIT).
- Jiageng Innovation Lab 嘉庚创新实验室 - Provincial mega-institute building China's first dedicated energy-storage research infrastructure, spanning low-carbon energy, displays, and graphene (Xiamen, China · Xiamen University / Fujian).
- Jun Jiang Group (USTC) - Robotic AI-Chemist 2.0 lineage couples on-board LLM multi-agent ChemAgents with cloud-linked lab robots for autonomous chemistry (Hefei, China · USTC).
- KAIST-POSCO Autonomous Lab - Dong-Hwa Seo's industry-academia autonomous lab with POSCO N.EX.T Hub cutting battery cathode discovery time by 93 percent (Daejeon, Korea · KAIST + POSCO).
- KIST MARK System - KIST's robotic synthesis + characterisation + ML workflow for accelerated discovery across battery and functional materials (Seoul, Korea · KIST).
- Ley Group - Cambridge group pioneering continuous-flow and machine-assisted synthesis for natural products and methodology, with four spinouts and 900+ publications (Cambridge, UK · U Cambridge).
- MMLI / Burke Group - NSF-funded institute around Burke's iterative MIDA-boronate small-molecule synthesizer, closing the loop with AI agents like AlphaSynthesis (Champaign, USA · UIUC · $20M+ NSF).
- NIMS Autonomous AI Network - NIMS-Tsukuba framework letting multiple autonomous AI labs spontaneously share data and coordinate searches across different material systems (Tsukuba, Japan · NIMS + Tsukuba).
- Noël Group - Flow chemistry group running RoboChem, an autonomous photocatalytic reaction platform that optimises continuous-flow photochemistry without human intervention (Amsterdam, Netherlands · U Amsterdam).
- Polybot - AI-driven autonomous platform at Argonne CNM that synthesises, prints, and tests electronic polymer films for solar cells, biosensors, and recyclable devices (Lemont, USA · Argonne).
- Shanghai AI Laboratory - National AGI lab whose AGI4S programme builds Intern-S1 scientific foundation models and the Intern-Discovery agent-plus-instrument platform (Shanghai, China · National AI Lab).
- SNU SDL Ecosystem - Yousung Jung's group uses LLMs to predict material synthesisability, anchoring a wider SNU autonomous-lab cluster across batteries and catalysis (Seoul, Korea · SNU).
- SurFF / Uni-MOF (Wang Group) - Xiaonan Wang's group building foundation models (SurFF, Uni-MOF) for catalyst surfaces and MOF gas adsorption at high-throughput screening scale (Beijing, China · Tsinghua).
- AURORA (KTH) - Modular robotic platform integrating automated synthesis, characterisation, and evaluation, demonstrated on metal-halide perovskites (Stockholm, Sweden · KTH).
- CELEST Autonomous Battery Lab - Fully automated, AI-planned battery-materials lab that autonomously synthesises, assembles, and cycles cells (Ulm, Germany · KIT + Ulm + HIU).
- EPFL Self-Driving Lab (LIAC) - Self-driving platform for nano- and advanced-materials synthesis with active-learning optimisation (Lausanne, Switzerland · EPFL).
- KIMS Autonomous Alloy Lab - Closed-loop alloy discovery (arc-melting to annealing to XRD) with reinforcement-learning optimisation (Changwon, Korea · KIMS).
- KIER Smart Laboratory - 24-hour autonomous synthesis, analysis, and XRD for safety-critical energy and catalyst materials (Daejeon, Korea · KIER).
For-profit SDL companies, pharma in-house programmes, and hardware/instrument vendors with SDL relevance.
- Arctoris - Oxford-based automated drug-discovery CRO running the Ulysses robotic platform for reproducible biochemical, cell, and molecular assay data (Oxford, UK · ~$15M raised).
- ByteDance Seed AI4S - ByteDance's foundation-model team applying AI to biological structure prediction (Protenix), quantum chemistry, and topological materials physics (Beijing, China · Corporate).
- Chemspeed Technologies (Bruker) - Swiss lab-automation vendor selling modular robotic synthesis, formulation, and characterisation workflows for materials, pharma, and battery R&D (Füllinsdorf, Switzerland · Bruker NASDAQ).
- CMU AI Science Foundry - Carnegie Mellon initiative running the ASAP autonomous platform for AI-guided experiments in hard materials, chemistry, and biology (Pittsburgh, USA · Federal + Univ).
- Culture Biosciences - Cloud-connected 250 mL bioreactor service for outsourced upstream bioprocess development with remote monitoring and bioprocess software (South San Francisco, USA · $107M raised).
- Cusp AI (Cambridge HQ) - AI-driven materials discovery startup (Max Welling co-founder) designing functional crystals on demand for carbon capture, batteries, PFAS removal, and semiconductors (Cambridge, UK · $100M+ Series A · $520M val).
- Cusp AI (Amsterdam node) - Amsterdam Science Park (Lab42) node of CuspAI running the Welling-led ML stack for generative inverse design of functional materials (Amsterdam, Netherlands · part of $520M val).
- Deep Principle 深度原理 - Agentic AI for materials and chemistry. ECML framework orchestrates DFT, MD, ML, and wet-lab experiments; recently hired MIT's Heather Kulik as Chief Scientist (Hangzhou, China · A2 round).
- DP Technology / Bohrium 深势科技 - AI-for-Science company behind Bohrium, Hermite, Piloteye, and Uni-Lab, building foundation-model infrastructure for chemistry, biology, and batteries (Beijing, China · VC).
- Emerald Cloud Lab - Remote-controlled cloud laboratory letting scientists design and run wet-lab experiments on 200+ instrument models via a unified software interface (Austin, USA · SaaS).
- Fraunhofer MAPs - Fraunhofer ISC programme coupling robotic synthesis and characterisation with AI-driven design for glass, battery, and functional materials (Würzburg, Germany · €20M).
- Ginkgo Bioworks - Synthetic-biology platform offering autonomous strain-engineering foundries and cloud-lab access for antibody, enzyme, and cell-line programmes (Boston, USA · $786M raised).
- Hamilton Company - Reno-based manufacturer of Microlab liquid-handling robots, process sensors, and automated sample-storage systems used across pharma and clinical labs (Reno, USA · ~$815M rev).
- Kebotix - Self-driving lab platform pairing generative chemistry, automated synthesis, and robotic characterisation for specialty-chemicals and advanced-materials discovery (Cambridge MA, USA · $23.7M Series B).
- LabGenius Therapeutics - Bermondsey biotech whose EVA platform closed-loops ML design with automated wet-lab cycles to engineer selectivity-enhanced antibodies for solid tumours (London, UK · undisclosed VC).
- Lila Sciences - Flagship Pioneering venture building Scientific Superintelligence: AI agents coupled to autonomous wet labs across therapeutics, materials, energy, and chemicals (Cambridge MA, USA · $550M).
- Medra AI - Physical AI scientists for life-science labs: vision-guided robot arms operating standard instruments end-to-end across gene editing, cell biology, and microbial discovery (San Francisco, USA · $63M total · Series A Dec 2025).
- Novartis MicroCycle - Novartis Basel in-house self-driving lab integrating micro-scale synthesis, automated purification, real-time bioassays, and ML-driven compound design (Basel, Switzerland · internal).
- Opentrons - Open-source liquid-handling robots and the Flex workstation plus OpentronsAI natural-language protocol design for genomics and proteomics labs (Brooklyn, USA · $261M raised · $1.8B val).
- Peak Analysis & Automation - UK lab-automation integrator building modular robotic workcells with Overlord scheduling software for life-science and pharma throughput (Farnborough, UK · Private · Grenova group).
- Periodic Labs - Stealth-emerged lab building AI scientists with paired autonomous laboratories, starting with materials physics: superconductors and semiconductor thermal materials (San Francisco, USA · undisclosed VC).
- Qingkui 青葵智造 - Beijing-registered robotics-plus-AI scale-up building chemistry workstations for pharma, energy, and advanced materials; planning a 100-robot AI cloud lab in Yichang (Beijing/Yichang, China · municipal + VC).
- Strateos - Cloud-lab-as-a-service operating robotic San Diego and Menlo Park facilities for remote small-molecule, biologics, and synthetic-biology workflows (San Diego, USA · acquired by Multiply Labs 2023).
- Tecan Group - Swiss-listed maker of Fluent and Freedom EVO liquid-handling platforms plus OEM components for diagnostics and life-science automation (Männedorf, Switzerland · SIX: TECN · CHF 934M rev).
- XtalPi 晶泰科技 - HKEX-listed AI + quantum-physics + robotics platform running autonomous drug-discovery and materials labs across Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Boston (Shenzhen, China · HKEX 2228 · HK$47B pipeline).
- Yongjiang Lab 甬江实验室 - Zhejiang provincial materials research institute running advanced functional, structural, and transformative materials platforms including a 6-inch micro-nano device line (Ningbo, China · provincial).
- Radical AI - AI agents coupled to a closed-loop robotic lab discovering inorganic materials, alloys, and electrolytes; CSO Gerbrand Ceder built LBNL's A-Lab (New York, USA · $55M seed).
- Mattiq - Northwestern spinout running high-throughput combinatorial megalibrary synthesis of millions of nanomaterials per day to train AI for clean-energy catalysts (Chicago, USA · ~$35M).
- Dunia Innovations - Self-driving labs running the full design-make-test-analyse loop for electrocatalyst, battery, and CO2-conversion materials, scaling to a €280M Berlin GigaLab (Berlin, Germany · €10.6M seed + €280M).
- ChemLex - 24/7 fully automated robotic synthesis line (~800 reactions/day) coupling AI to wet-lab chemistry for drug discovery (Singapore · $45M).
- MegaRobo 镁伽科技 - China's largest smart-lab robotics company, building autonomous agents that run real experiments across life sciences, chemistry, and energy materials (Beijing, China · ~$300M).
- FutureHouse / Edison Scientific - AI-scientist agent stack (the Robin multi-agent discovery system) coupled to its own robotic wet lab; for-profit spinout Edison (San Francisco, USA · $70M).
Software platforms, scheduling layers, and instrument-connectivity standards that make SDLs run.
- ABB Robotics - Industrial robotics arm supplying GoFa and YuMi collaborative arms plus AVR autonomous mobile robots for multi-vendor lab workcells (Zürich, Switzerland · Public).
- Artificial - aLab Suite orchestrates instruments, robots, people, and data into closed-loop digital workflows for life-science labs (Palo Alto, USA · Microsoft M12-backed).
- Atinary - SDLabs no-code platform pairing Bayesian and ML optimizers with robotic hardware for closed-loop chemistry and materials discovery (Lausanne, Switzerland · undisclosed).
- Automata (LINQ) - LINQ platform orchestrates modular benchtop robotics with a node-based workflow canvas and Python SDK for genomics and assay screening (London, UK · $45M Series C).
- Benchling - Cloud R&D platform combining ELN, registry, inventory, and workflow tools for biotech, used by most large biopharma (San Francisco, USA · $412M · $6B val).
- Cenevo (Titian + Labguru) - Post-merger entity behind Mosaic sample tracking and Labguru ELN/LIMS, integrating 150+ instruments across biopharma R&D (London, UK · undisclosed).
- HighRes + Opentrons - Modular robotic workcells and Cellario scheduling software paired with Opentrons via a 2026 agent-to-agent AI workflow partnership (Beverly, USA · strategic partnership).
- Synthace - Digital experiment platform for designing, simulating, and executing high-dimensional multivariate experiments on lab automation hardware (London, UK · undisclosed).
- Unchained Labs (Stuntman) - Stuntman is a natural-language AI automation platform with flexible hardware for biologics, gene therapy, and reaction screening (Pleasanton, USA · undisclosed).
- UniteLabs - Python-based lab automation OS connecting 175+ instruments through one API for code-defined, version-controlled workflows (Munich, Germany · €2.77M pre-seed).
Pin data is inline in index.html (look for window.SDL_DATA = [...]). Each entry:
{
id: "aria", // short ID
name: "UK ARIA AI Scientists", // display name
org: "ARIA", // organisation
city: "London",
country: "UK",
flag: "🇬🇧",
lat: 51.51, lon: -0.13,
tier: "national", // national | academic | commercial | labos
domain: "cross-domain", // chemistry | materials | energy | biology | batteries | drug-discovery | orchestration | cross-domain
maturity: "prototype", // concept | prototype | operational | industrial
charact: "single-technique", // synthesis-only | single-technique | multi-technique | advanced-multimodal
ai: "strong", // strong | partial | planned | none
scale: "national",
invest: 8, // estimated investment in millions (drives salience)
investLabel: "£6M",
url: "https://aria.org.uk/",
sources: ["https://aria.org.uk/funding-opportunities/", ...]
}git clone https://github.com/yetiswang/sdl-map.git
cd sdl-map
python3 -m http.server 8000Open http://localhost:8000/ (loads index.html). Edit in place, commit, and push to deploy via GitHub Pages.
Corrections, additions, and rename/closure flags are welcome. Open an issue or PR. For each new entry, include:
- Name + org + location (with coordinates).
- Primary URL (must resolve, not redirect to parking).
- Tier (national / academic / commercial / labos), domain, maturity, charact, ai.
- Sources (2-3 authoritative links: institutional press release, peer-reviewed paper, official funding announcement).
Things that get flagged for revision: dead URLs, rebrands the entry hasn't caught up with, mergers/acquisitions, scope drift, programmes that ended without a successor.
Source available under MIT. Content (pin entries, descriptions) reflects public information about the listed initiatives as of compile time.