About us

FyreFly Systems is the team behind Phonos and Alef, a GbR in Köthen (Anhalt). We have been building since August 2024.

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Mission

“It is these chromosomes … that contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its functioning in the mature state,”

wrote Erwin Schrödinger in 1944 — decades before anyone had actually seen the structure he was describing.

At some point, we noticed just how unnecessarily complex, opaque and often expensive access to current AI and computing infrastructure had become in biotech — brilliant research slowed down not by a shortage of ideas, but by barriers that had nothing to do with the science itself.

We wanted to change that, and make the world a little simpler. Phonos exists to put molecular AI models within reach of any research team — without the overhead, the opacity or the price tag.

It started as an engineering project

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FyreFly began as an engineering project — a small group set on making the world of complex biotech computation a little easier, one step at a time.

The lab started in August 2024 with small optimisation software and a system for easy access to high-performance computing. At a certain point we decided to combine most of it, and that became Phonos — where we are now.

Company: FyreFly Systems GbR
Lab since: August 2024
Based in: Köthen (Anhalt)
Founders: Maximilian Scheinast-Peter, Janek Fabian Franz

Team

Three people build Phonos and advise on its science.

Maximilian Scheinast-Peter

Lead developer, shareholder

Janek Fabian Franz, B.Eng.

Shareholder, accounting, computer vision

AbdulRahman Essam Saleh, M.Sc.

Advisor, research, molecular biotechnology

How we work

We set ourselves a few rules at the start, and we still work by them.

Full transparency: Every model on Phonos names who built it and who serves it, and the privacy policy says where your data goes — including when it leaves the EU.
No artificial limits: We expose the parameters the models themselves offer — recycling steps, sample counts, sampling temperature — instead of hiding them behind presets.
As accessible as it can be: Phonos runs in the browser, in English and German, with nothing to install.
One step at a time: We started small — optimisation software and an HPC access system — and grew them into one platform.