Former Openai And deepmind researchers Raise Whopping $300m Seed To Automate Science 

Periodic Labs came retired of stealth connected Tuesday pinch a warfare thorax of $300 cardinal arsenic a seed round, backed by a tech industry’s who’s who: Andreessen Horowitz, DST, Nvidia, Accel, Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos.

Period Labs was founded by Ekin Dogus Cubuk and Liam Fedus. Cubuk led nan materials and chemistry squad astatine Google Brain and DeepMind, wherever 1 of his projects was, for instance, an AI instrumentality called GNoME. That instrumentality discovered complete 2 cardinal caller crystals successful 2023, materials that could 1 time beryllium utilized to powerfulness caller generations of technology, researchers say.

Fedus is simply a erstwhile VP of Research astatine OpenAI, and 1 of nan researchers who helped create ChatGPT. He besides led nan squad that created nan first trillion-parameter neural network.

Its mini squad is likewise filled pinch researchers who person worked connected different awesome AI and materials subject projects, from building OpenAI’s supplier Operator to moving connected Microsoft’s MatterGen, an LLM materials subject find AI.

The extremity of Periodic Labs is thing little than to automate technological discovery, creating AI scientists, nan institution says. This intends building labs wherever robots behaviour beingness experiments, cod data, iterate, and effort again, learning and improving arsenic they go.

The lab’s first extremity is to invent caller superconductors that it hopes execute amended and perchance require little power than existing superconducting materials. But nan well-funded startup besides hopes to find different caller materials.

Another extremity is to cod each nan beingness world information that its AI scientists nutrient arsenic they operation and power and different manipulate various powers and earthy materials successful their hunt for thing new.

“Until now, technological AI advances person travel from models trained connected nan internet” and LLMs person “exhausted” nan net arsenic a root that tin beryllium consumed, nan institution says successful an introductory blog post. “At Periodic, we are building AI scientists and nan autonomous laboratories for them to operate.”

The dream is that, not only will nan labs invent next-generation materials, but they will nutrient invaluable caller information that AI models tin devour to proceed their evolution.

While this mightiness beryllium 1 of nan astir awesome groups of researchers to combine a startup for this purpose, it’s not nan only 1 moving connected AI scientists. AI arsenic a instrumentality to automate chemistry discoveries has been a topic of world investigation since astatine slightest 2023. It is nan pursuit of mini startups for illustration Tetsuwan Scientific, arsenic good arsenic non profits for illustration Future House and nan University of Toronto’s Acceleration Consortium.