How do we bridge the gap between AI as a software and physical laboratory execution?
Atinary Co-Founder and CTO Dr. Loïc Roch recently joined François Capel (Innovation Advisor at Innovaud) on the Swisspreneur Podcast to discuss the emerging Swiss BioTools community and the rise of Physical AI: exploring how the next wave of artificial intelligence is moving beyond the screen and directly into the lab, transforming manual R&D bottlenecks into automated, scalable pipelines.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
- The Rise of BioTools: A high-growth life sciences category is emerging. Unlike traditional biotech, BioTools companies build the scalable, data-driven platform technologies that power and accelerate global research.
- The Lab of the Future: Atinary represents this shift. Our Self-Driving Labs® technology integrate cloud-native AI, robotics, and human expertise into a unified, closed-loop system that deploys seamlessly into existing workflows with standard instruments and assays.
- Lausanne is the Hub to Watch: A world-class Biotools community is rapidly forming in Lausanne. Backed by ecosystem champions like Innovaud, the Canton of Vaud is anchoring itself as the global destination for life sciences innovation.
AI to Augment, Not Replace
During the episode, Loïc highlights how Atinary’s Self-Driving Labs® technology is driving a paradigm shift to transform traditional, slow R&D pipelines:
“Traditional R&D can take years and cost millions. But what if you could cut that by 10 or even 100x? […] Self-Driving Labs integrates robotics and artificial intelligence to augment the human scientist. This is how we can really speed up discovery by up to 100 or even a 1000x.”
Dr. Loïc Roch, Co-Founder and CTO, Atinary
Crucially, he addresses why the biggest hurdle to this exponential acceleration isn’t the technology stack, but redefining the human workflows of researchers who traditionally plan experiments manually:
“Scientists are kind of the artists of science… where they think of how they should run [and plan] those experiments, how they can think of new experimental conditions […] But we still want to have humans deeply integrated into the loop. The real bottleneck in deep tech today isn’t technology – it’s change management.”
Dr. Loïc Roch, Co-Founder and CTO, Atinary
References & Links
Official Swisspreneur Episode Page & Podcast Notes: Swisspreneur Podcast Ep. 554
More about Innovaud: Visit innovaud.ch
More about Swisspreneur: Visit swisspreneur.org
