FutureHouse is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit independent research organization based in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood, founded in 2023 by Sam Rodriques and Andrew White. It builds and validates AI systems for scientific discovery, primarily in biology, and operates a 3,000 sq. ft. wet lab alongside its computational teams. Its released systems include PaperQA2, an agent for scientific literature tasks; Aviary, a framework for training language agents on real scientific tasks; ether0, an open-source reinforcement-learning reasoning model for chemistry; and Robin, a multi-agent system that autonomously generated hypotheses, designed experiments and identified ripasudil, an existing glaucoma drug, as a candidate therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration. FutureHouse also published the LAB-Bench and BixBench benchmarks for measuring model performance on biology research and bioinformatics tasks. In 2025 it launched Kosmos, its first AI Scientist capable of running complex analyses autonomously, and spun out Edison Scientific as a separate for-profit company to commercialize the technology; the AI systems originally offered under the FutureHouse name are now part of Edison Scientific's platform. FutureHouse's flagship program today is its AI-for-Science Independent Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Funding
FutureHouse is a nonprofit funded through philanthropic partnerships and grants rather than venture rounds. Per its own FAQ, its first two years were made possible by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, with additional support from OpenPhilanthropy, the National Science Foundation and the AI Safety Institute, among others. No round sizes have been publicly disclosed.