Toronto-based BioRender has launched Leo, a software assistant designed to guide researchers through making scientific figures, with the company promising more accurate results than general-purpose image-generation tools.
The launch adds to the Toronto startup’s existing tools for illustrating biological research. BetaKit reported that BioRender announced Leo on Tuesday, describing it as a way to help scientists plan, sketch and build images they can continue editing themselves.
A BioRender spokesperson told BetaKit by email that researchers could already generate scientific figures by entering prompts into its platform. The difference with Leo, the spokesperson said, is guidance throughout the process rather than simply producing an image from an initial request.
According to the company, Leo draws on a library of icons and templates vetted by scientists and selects different models for individual steps. BioRender says the resulting figures are intended to be clear, accurate and editable.
The company is positioning the launch as a response to concerns about unreliable generated images undermining trust in science. Its accuracy claims are the company’s assessment of the product.
Guidance before the finished figure
Co-founder and chief executive Shiz Aoki said in a statement that scientific figures require a different approach from other illustrations. She described Leo as asking researchers questions, proposing sketches and constructing images that remain open to manual refinement.
Aoki also pointed to the difficulty of representing science precisely. General-purpose image tools can produce research illustrations, but the source report describes problems meeting academic and publication standards when those tools lack specialized knowledge.
Those shortcomings can lead to inaccurate output and repeated requests before a researcher gets a useful illustration. BioRender’s approach centres on providing figure-making guidance alongside its existing collection of scientific visual materials.
A Toronto company with a global customer base
Aoki previously served as lead science illustrator at National Geographic. She founded BioRender in 2017 with entrepreneur Ryan Marien and software engineer Katya Shteyn, who is the company’s chief technology officer.
The business has focused on helping researchers create biological graphics more quickly and making the visual presentation of biology more consistent. Its platform is used to draw diagrams and communicate research.
According to BetaKit, BioRender serves more than four million scientists and thousands of research institutions. Its users also include all of the world’s top 30 pharmaceutical companies and 15 Nobel Prize-winning laboratories.
The report describes BioRender as profitable, with a staff of 200. A secondary investment from biotech investor Dimension Capital in December 2025 valued the company at US$900 million.
BioRender also reached an agreement with Anthropic last October to integrate its scientific illustration library into Claude for Life Sciences, according to the report.
