High-tech “self-driving” labs, AI drug discovery and gene editing: “A veritable movement of autonomous science is underway,” declares a 2025 paper from the Royal Society, the world's most prestigious science institution.

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Analysis
January 20, 2026
Meet the startups bringing AI and robots to the lab
Autonomous science is transforming not just how research begins, but how it ends
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Éanna Kelly is a contributing editor at Sifted, and writes Startup Life , a weekly newsletter on what it takes to build a startup. Follow him on X and LinkedIn

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