HOW IT’S MEASURED
The Hidden Bottleneck Nobody Is Automating
How It’s Measured, Episode 4 — Conversation with Sapho Bio co-founder Abraham Chaibi
Oct 02, 2026
HIGHLIGHTS
Three ideas from the episode
THE BOTTLENECK
Testing is the new slow step
Products that took years to make now take weeks. If testing still takes weeks, it becomes the slowest part of the loop.
THE WEDGE
Start where the bar is highest
Sapho began with pharma quality control, one of the toughest regulatory bars, so the lessons carry into easier markets.
THE OVERLOOKED OPPORTUNITY
QC is where lab robots belong
Research workflows are open-ended. QC workflows are defined, repetitive and paid for, which makes them a promising place to automate.
Testing is the new bottleneck
When building took years, a few weeks of testing didn’t matter. Now it’s often the slowest step in the loop. “If your testing time is also weeks, this is now a much more material element of your design, build, test and learn loop,” says Sapho Bio co-founder Abraham Chaibi.
The gap widens with every advance in how fast we build, and it isn’t small. Peel back almost any manufacturing process and a large share of the cost goes to proving the product works. Every industry that speeds up inherits the same problem.
Early proof
Sapho started with pharma QC: sterility, endotoxins, purity and potency. It has served 30+ customers across 10,000+ tests. Faster lot release took six months to design and validate. Extending beyond-use dates took three.
The team is building shared infrastructure, the Sapho Brain, so each new test is easier to add than the last. It’s also working toward ISO 17025 accreditation.
Sapho started with pharma QC: sterility, endotoxins, purity and potency. It has served 30+ customers across 1,000+ tests. Faster lot release took six months to design and validate. Extending beyond-use dates took three.
Why robots belong in QC
Research workflows have to be discovered before they can be automated. QC workflows are already defined, repetitive and paid for, yet often run with several people in the loop. That’s why Sapho joined NVIDIA Inception to explore world-model approaches to sample handling.
The team is building shared infrastructure, the Sapho Brain, so each new test is easier to add than the last. It’s also working toward ISO 17025 accreditation.
What comes next
Humanoid robots, fusion reactors, qubits, cell therapies: every new technology will need a spec, and every spec will need a test. Sapho’s goal is an automated third-party testing lab, repeated across industries.
Measure twice, cut once.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The quick version
Speed moved the bottleneck
As manufacturing cycles shrink to weeks, testing time decides how fast teams can design, build, test and learn.
Each test makes the next one easier
Six months for faster lot release, then three for beyond-use dating. Shared infrastructure is meant to keep lowering the cost of adding tests.
Every new technology will need a test
From cell therapies to humanoid robots, more complex products mean more specs, and every spec needs a lab that can run it reliably.
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