NEW YORK — Opentrons Labworks Inc. has appointed James Atwood as chief executive officer, formalizing a leadership transition that took effect in July 2025 as the company positions its robotics platform at the center of AI-driven drug discovery and laboratory automation.
Atwood joined the executive role after leading Opentrons’ Robotics Business Unit since April 2023. During that period, the company expanded its installed base to more than 10,000 robotic systems used in academic, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical laboratories worldwide.
“James is the right leader to guide Opentrons as it embarks upon the exciting work to link conceptual AI to the physical laboratory world,” said Myrtle Potter, chair of the board of Opentrons Labworks Inc. “Building on its strong robotics foundation and its growing AI expertise, Opentrons is set for realizing its next phase of growth.”
Opentrons develops laboratory automation systems designed to connect computational research and artificial intelligence directly with physical experimentation. The company has increasingly positioned its robotics network as infrastructure for autonomous science, where large volumes of experiments can be run, measured, and fed back into AI models.
“AI can design molecules, predict protein structures, and model biological systems,” Atwood said. “Turning those predictions into medicines still requires physical experiments — millions of them. Our work is focused on building the infrastructure that connects AI directly to the wet lab, so every experiment generates data that makes the models smarter and smarter, in less time and with higher fidelity.”
The company’s Flex platform is designed to support complex, multi-step laboratory workflows across areas such as genomics, proteomics, and automated antibody discovery and screening. Its OT-2 platform focuses on core liquid-handling applications. Opentrons said its systems are now deployed at every top-20 U.S. research university and at 14 of the world’s top 15 biopharmaceutical companies.
The leadership change comes as Opentrons continues to scale its robotics footprint and deepen its focus on integrating automation with AI-based research tools across drug discovery and life sciences.
