AI

Altrove Leverages AI and Lab Automation for Cutting-Edge Material Development

04 July 2024

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Paikan Begzad

Summary

In recent years, the development of new materials has accelerated significantly, and French startup Altrove is set to make a substantial impact in this field. The deep tech company has successfully raised €3.7 million (approximately $4 million) to fuel its innovative approach.

Altrove's mission is to address longstanding challenges in the discovery of new materials. According to co-founder and CEO Thibaud Martin, research and development in material science has traditionally progressed at a sluggish pace due to numerous bottlenecks. A major hurdle has been predicting whether materials composed of various elements can theoretically exist.

When combining different chemical elements, the number of possible combinations is vast. For instance, pairing two elements results in tens of thousands of possibilities, three elements lead to hundreds of thousands, and four elements yield millions of combinations. To overcome these constraints, AI models developed by teams at DeepMind, Microsoft, Meta, and Orbital Materials have made significant advancements in predicting stable new materials.

"In the last nine months, more stable materials have been predicted than in the previous 49 years," Martin stated. However, knowing that a new material can exist is only part of the challenge. The next step involves creating the actual recipe, which includes precise details such as proportions, temperature, sequence, and duration.

Altrove focuses on inorganic materials, particularly rare earth elements. These elements present a unique market opportunity due to their scarcity, fluctuating prices, and heavy reliance on China for supply. Many companies are seeking alternatives to mitigate regulatory risks associated with Chinese sources.

Rather than inventing materials from scratch, Altrove selects promising candidates from predicted materials and uses its own AI models to develop potential recipes. Currently, the company tests these recipes individually, producing small samples for each. Altrove has also developed a proprietary characterization technology using an X-ray diffractometer to evaluate the performance of the materials.

"Understanding what you’ve made and why is crucial," Martin explained. Often, the output differs from initial expectations, and Altrove's expertise in characterization, led by co-founder and CTO Joonatan Laulainen, is essential in refining the process. The company owns intellectual property related to this characterization technology.

To enhance its capabilities, Altrove aims to automate its lab processes, enabling simultaneous testing of multiple recipes and speeding up the feedback loop. "Prediction alone covers only 30% of the journey to an industrially viable material. The remaining 70% involves real-life iteration, making lab automation critical for increasing throughput and parallelizing experiments," Martin noted.

Positioning itself as a hardware-enabled AI company, Altrove plans to license its newly developed materials or collaborate with partners for production. The company secured funding from Contrarian Ventures and Emblem, with notable investors like Thomas Clozel (CEO of Owkin), Julien Chaumond (CTO of Hugging Face), and Nikolaj Deichmann (founder of 3Shape) participating.

Drawing inspiration from biotech companies utilizing AI for drug discovery, Altrove aims to revolutionize material development. The startup plans to complete its automated lab by the end of the year and expects to market its first product within 18 months.