Former OpenAI and DeepMind researchers increase whopping $300M seed to automate science 

Periodic Labs got here out of stealth on Tuesday with a struggle chest of $300 million as a seed spherical, backed by a tech trade who’s who: Andreessen Horowitz, DST, Nvidia, Accel, Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos.

Periodic Labs was based by Ekin Dogus Cubuk and Liam Fedus. Cubuk led the supplies and chemistry crew at Google Mind and DeepMind, the place one in all his tasks was, as an illustration, an AI device known as GNoME. That device discovered over 2 million new crystals in 2023, supplies that would at some point be used to energy new generations of know-how, researchers say.

Fedus is a former VP of Analysis at OpenAI, and one of many researchers who helped create ChatGPT. He additionally led the crew that created the first trillion-parameter neural network.

Its small crew is likewise stuffed with researchers who’ve labored on different main AI and supplies science tasks, from constructing OpenAI’s agent Operator to engaged on Microsoft’s MatterGen, an LLM supplies science discovery AI.

The objective of Periodic Labs is nothing lower than to automate scientific discovery, creating AI scientists, the corporate says. This implies constructing labs the place robots conduct bodily experiments, acquire information, iterate, and take a look at once more, studying and enhancing as they go.

The lab’s first objective is to invent new superconductors that it hopes carry out higher and presumably require much less vitality than present superconducting supplies. However the well-funded startup additionally hopes to search out different new supplies.

One other objective is to gather all of the bodily world information that its AI scientists produce as they combine and warmth and in any other case manipulate numerous powers and uncooked supplies of their seek for one thing new.

“Till now, scientific AI advances have come from fashions skilled on the web” and LLMs have “exhausted” the web as a supply that may be consumed, the corporate says in an introductory blog post. “[A]t Periodic, we’re constructing AI scientists and the autonomous laboratories for them to function.”

The hope is that, not solely will the labs invent next-generation supplies, however they’ll produce invaluable recent information that AI fashions can devour to proceed their evolution.

Whereas this is perhaps one of the vital spectacular teams of researchers to assemble a startup for this function, it’s not the one one engaged on AI scientists. AI as a device to automate chemistry discoveries has been a topic of academic research since at least 2023. It’s the pursuit of tiny startups like Tetsuwan Scientific, in addition to nonprofits like Future House and the College of Toronto’s Acceleration Consortium.