C12.ai secures RMB 50 million financing to accelerate deployment of the "Physical AI Scientist"

Recently, C12.ai, the company developing the "Physical AI Scientist," completed a new financing round of RMB 50 million. The round was led by Yonghua Capital, with participation from Inno-Chip and individual investors. C12.ai's initial financing round was completed in August 2022, led by Yunqi Partners, with co-investment from Eminence Venture, BioMap, and individual investors.

Founded in 2022, C12.ai's core product, Talos, utilizes a general-purpose dual-arm mobile robot as its hardware carrier. Through proprietary sensors and its Vision-Language-Action architecture, the robot is equipped with autonomous operational skills and real-time reasoning capabilities for professional experiments. Unlike the rigid model of traditional automation equipment, which is designed for "one machine, one task," Talos is a goal-driven general-purpose robot. It can directly operate existing instruments without requiring laboratory modifications and possesses real-time adaptation and error recovery capabilities.

In a real-world pharmaceutical laboratory at BeOne Medicines, Talos has been continuously operating on a trial basis for 50 days, demonstrating operational proficiency approaching that of a senior medicinal chemist—an industry first. Across the 15 molecular purification experiments completed to date, each molecule involved over 200 consecutive operational steps, totaling more than 3,000 physical operations, with Talos maintaining zero errors at the execution level.

Molecular purification occupies approximately 50% of medicinal chemists' working hours and demands extensive experience and manual dexterity. Talos has achieved an operational level comparable to that of a senior medicinal chemist with ten years of experience—another industry first. C12.ai's goal is for robots to handle 80% of routine molecular purification in the future, freeing scientists to focus on more creative research decisions.

For medicinal chemists, purification is merely Talos's first "point of entry" into the laboratory. Founder and CEO Chen Zhigang stated that C12.ai's roadmap follows the drug development lifecycle downward: currently focusing on small-molecule purification, the next step is entering ADME experiments, and in the future, it will cover GxP-compliant manufacturing and analytical method automation.

Beyond pharmaceuticals, C12.ai is also exploring scenarios such as flexible cosmetics manufacturing. A consumer takes a photo, AI identifies the skin condition and generates a customized formula, and the robot completes small-batch production overnight for direct delivery. Chen Zhigang stated: "Any physical scenario that requires 'small-batch, multi-lot' production, 'continuous manufacturing,' and 'demands environmental adaptability' is our target."