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| Gaurav Sharma, Energy Analyst, Oilholics Synonymous with Thibaud Martin, CEO & Cofounder of Altrove (center), and Joonatan Laulainen (right), CTO & Cofounder, at the company's laboratory in Paris, France. |
Coming up with new materials in the laboratory isn't new. The material science community has been at it for nearly a century and found new materials with their use cases oftentimes by accident or sometimes by design. But in an age in which the West's concerns over secure access to rare earths is rising, the "design" aspect of material science has taken on a whole new meaning thanks to AI.
The fine craft of AI driven materials discovery - a growing field either side of the Atlantic - is in near step with growing geopolitical uncertainties and anxieties over critical materials access that much of the digital world has come to rely.
In recent years, the Oilholic has counted nearly two dozen startups attempting it, primarily in Europe and North America - the two continents where the need is likely to be the greatest as China lords it over its rare earth resources. Many are upscaling following recent seed funding rounds. Among them is Paris, France-based Altrove whose lab this blogger visited recently to catch up with its CEO and Cofounder Thibaud Martin.
"We believe our startup is on an exciting journey because we exist in a market that's growing out of commercial, geopolitical and environmental necessities - three very powerful motivators. Security of resource materials supply is critical to business and industry," Martin told this blogger while taking him around the startup's lab in a Parisian suburb.
And Joonatan Laulainen, CTO and Cofouncer of Altrove, who joined Martin and The Oilholic on the lab floor, noted: "We believe ours is a race to have scalable technology in place that ensures that our AI-designed materials consume the resources we want them to consume, without dependence on other nations' resources. We are quietly and confidently proving to investors that we're on our way there.
“Ultimately, our AI acts as a digital scientist, one that designs and executes experiments without human intervention. So, we can develop new materials faster, cheaper and at the scale industry requires.”
Martin, Laulainen and their team of over a dozen international colleagues, believe the difference would be reducing a typical time frame of 20 years for conjuring up a new material (and taking it to production) to under two years.
There's plenty of market chatter about similar levels of ambition across the AI driven materials discovery space. Martin discussed the segment's business and market potential in an interview with yours truly for Forbes earlier this month, which you can have a read here should you wish.
For its efforts, Altrove has commendably secured "over a dozen partnerships" with companies across several industries to deploy AI-designed materials at scale. Some of its first-of-a-kind technical milestones include - rare-earth-free, cobalt-free magnetic materials for high-performance motors and non-toxic, lead-free compounds for sensors and actuators.
Martin declined to reveal the names of the companies Altrove is partnering with at this stage. But in the spirit of demonstrating its credentials and proving that its AI works, both the CEO and CTO offered this blogger an off record tour of their lab, its inner workings and insight on how upscaling their tech would fall into place.
As things stand, Team Altrove appears to be well prepared for the hard slog in this competitive sphere, as interest from seed investors continues to grow across this segment. The company has $14 million to work with for now, $10 million of which was raised in a recent seed funding round led by Alven, an independent venture capital firm that's backed over 130 startups over the last two decades.
The Oilholic wishes Team Altrove all the very best in their efforts. And overall, it looks to be an exciting industry in its nascent stages, with companies and technologies well worth keeping an eye out for. That's all for the moment folks. More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'!
