Biotech startup Labro Inc. has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to accelerate pilot deployments of its flagship automated cell-counting system, and expand its offerings for clinical and academic laboratories. The round will fund integrations that tie the product into a wider range of research workflows and preclinical discovery pipelines, applying the company’s bioinstrumentation expertise to genetics and drug discovery use cases.
Leading the effort is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Jialun Sun, whose background in human–computer interaction and enterprise product design, together with his role on the editorial board of the SARC Journal of Intelligence & Technology, shaped how the system reduces friction at the bench. Sun led early research inside academic and clinical labs to understand how technicians worked under biosafety cabinets, where manual microscopy slowed them, and which steps introduced preventable variation. Those observations drove the first prototypes: guided slide-loading that removed calibration decisions, interfaces that surface only the actions required in the moment, and review screens that make counts auditable without slowing experienced users.
By bringing research, design and engineering into one track, the system does more than automate the task; it reshapes the workflow into something faster to learn and consistently reliable at the bench. “Tools should make demanding environments easier to operate in,” Sun says. “That is how smaller labs and mixed-skill teams gain confidence quickly.”
Modernizing Labwork
Manual and semi-automated cell counting can add friction at the bench. Accuracy varies by operator and by step order, while annotations and exports often sit in separate tools. Small deviations in focus or segmentation thresholds can compound into inconsistent numbers and longer review cycles.
The Labro Automatic Cell Counting Machine addresses this by bringing image capture, segmentation, review, and report export into a single guided interface. Each run produces a consistent result with a clear record of how it was produced. Batches move end-to-end without context switching, and inline quality checks at each stage surface issues when a technician can still act on them.
Labro’s cell counter is built to eliminate the slow, error-prone steps of manual microscopy under biosafety cabinets. Instead of adjusting focus knobs, calibrating fields or switching between software windows, technicians load a slide into a guided tray that removes the need for manual calibration entirely. Compact optical units capture the sample automatically, computer-vision models segment cells in real time, and the interface displays results through an intuitive review panel that highlights counts, uncertainties and items flagged for confirmation. The entire workflow; capture, segmentation, review and export—runs end to end in one place. What traditionally required 30 to 45 minutes of attention becomes a straightforward 10-minute process with fewer opportunities to drift off-protocol. Sun notes that the goal was not simply speed, but reliability: “When steps are predictable and recoverable, you get consistency every time, regardless of who is on shift.”
Sun frames the product around two principles that are visible in the interface and in the data it produces. First, training happens in the flow of work. Confidence overlays and localized flags direct attention to spots where review delivers the most value, so new researchers learn faster while experts keep their pace. Second, every result carries its own provenance, with parameters and reviewer actions captured alongside the count. That provenance shortens verification and handoffs, and it gives teams a common record when they discuss edge cases.
Signals from the Field
Development began in late 2024 and continues into 2025 as Labro prepares for pilot deployment in both academic and clinical settings. The company’s go-to-market focus is speed and consistency with a full audit trail, replacing the patchwork of apps and devices that drags out verification.
With seed funding in place, Labro is expanding test coverage across sample types and refining the review experience for mixed-skill teams based on pilot feedback. Based on operational modeling, the system is expected to reduce staffing costs by up to $8K per lab technician annually through shorter reviews and fewer repeat counts.
Sun hopes the focus on human-computer interaction principles will shape how the counter exposes model behavior and recoverability. Reversible steps and confidence logs make the system easier to trust and easier to supervise. That design posture turns automation into something teams can understand and audit, which can matter when single count differences influence downstream decisions.
Recent milestones include first place in the 2024 NYBPC Capital Region, the “Most Innovative Award” at the 2025 NextGen Entrepreneur Summit, and acceptance into the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. Alongside the seed round, these wins point to demand for instrumentation and guided software that deliver dependable, auditable results as reproducibility and oversight requirements tighten across the bioscience industry.
