Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
PhnyX Lab raises $4 mil. in funding round led by SK Networks
Aidan Gomez, fourth from left, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, poses with Bae Min-seok, third from left, CEO of PhnyX Lab, Choi Sung-hwan, fifth from left, executive adviser to PhnyX Lab and COO of SK Networks, and others in Seoul in this March photo. Courtesy of SK Networks
By Nam Hyun-woo
PhnyX Lab, a pioneering generative AI startup transforming operations in the life sciences sector, has announced the successful close of a $4 million seed round through a SAFE (simple agreement for future equity).
The round was led by SK Networks, with participation from several prominent angel investors including Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, and Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, both of whom are original co-authors of “Attention Is All You Need,” the paradigm-shifting paper that ushered in the transformer era and laid the foundation for today’s generative AI models.
Their involvement follows extensive discussions with both Choi Sung-hwan, executive adviser to PhnyX Lab and COO of SK Networks, and Bae Min-seok, CEO of PhnyX Lab, reflecting a shared conviction in the transformative role of AI.
“This funding marks an important milestone that reflects PhnyX Lab’s potential to fundamentally transform how life science companies work,” Bae said.
“Our mission goes beyond improving efficiency — we’re reimagining the way critical work gets done, helping organizations accelerate not only drug discovery but also approval and delivery. The early success of our Cheiron platform and its rapid adoption by leading pharmaceutical companies has proven the real-world impact of our technology,” he added. “With this funding, we’re positioned to scale our team, deepen our product capabilities and forge global partnerships that push the boundaries of what’s possible in life sciences.”
PhnyX Lab’s flagship platform, Cheiron — launched in December 2024 — is already gaining strong traction across the industry, with over 60 companies, including all of Korea’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies by revenue, using it to streamline complex workflows such as research paper and clinical trial searches.
Building on this momentum, PhnyX Lab is now expanding Cheiron into a broader product suite. In June, the company entered strategic partnerships with SK Biopharmaceuticals and Samil Pharmaceutical to support the development of Cheiron Write — a new offering under the Cheiron brand designed to automate medical writing.
Cheiron Write aims to compress documentation workflows that traditionally take months into just weeks or even hours. This expansion marks a pivotal step toward transforming manual, fragmented pharmaceutical processes into intelligent, integrated workflows — bringing the company closer to its vision of fundamentally reengineering how life sciences work.