START: Chloe Sow, Co-Founder, Infera "The operating system for your laboratory”

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Scientific discovery shouldn't slow down because of software.

But every instrument in the lab ships its own, and someone has to learn all of them.

Researchers don't want to memorize instrument interfaces.

They want experiments to run.
They want answers.
They want data.

That's the problem Infera is solving.

Chloe Sow knows that side of it. Mechanical engineering at Harvard, research at Brigham and Women's, building medical devices and running the experiments by hand.

Her co-founder Troy Cheng spent an entire research summer figuring out how to run his lab's experiments on one machine. That was the summer.

So they built the thing they needed.

Describe an experiment in plain English.
Infera turns it into a validated, instrument-ready run across the equipment your lab already uses.

One system for protocol logic.
Vendor-specific scripts.
Laboratory data.
Inventory.
Institutional knowledge.

Today, running an experiment means going instrument by instrument.
Tomorrow, one place for all of them.

AI agents already design experiments and protocols.

But nothing connects those designs to real laboratory instruments.

One system.
From intent to execution.‍

Infera: "Control lab instruments with natural language"

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🎙️ Chloe Sow, Co-Founder, Infera on Fondo START pod

00:45 Claude Code for scientific instruments
01:27 Troy's entire job was one liquid handler
02:39 Every run captures a record. The missing layer between AI and instruments
03:12 Scientists pressing buttons without knowing the machine
04:22 Plain English to validated instrument-ready run. Academic labs and cores first
05:50 Every instrument ships its own closed software
06:02 Meeting at a virtual Caltech admit session
07:19 Applied to YC for feedback. Got in first try
08:35 Staying disciplined instead of chasing the SF event circuit

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Check out infera.bio