Dunia, a pioneering power in AI-driven materials discovery, right now introduced it has secured €10.6 million in funding co-led by Elaia and redalpine. Different backers embody the EIC, Tempo Ventures, Kindred Capital, Deep Science Ventures, and Anglo American in addition to trade professional angels.
Based in 2022, Dunia uniquely combines novel science-based AI algorithms with a proprietary self-driving lab to massively speed up the invention of recent superior supplies.
Specializing in power-to-x electrocatalysts used for inexperienced hydrogen or ammonia technology, in addition to the conversion of CO2 into extra superior chemical merchandise, Dunia’s platform addresses the crucial bottleneck in realizing the worldwide power transition in the direction of low-carbon fuels and chemical substances.
Michael Sidler, Founding Accomplice at redalpine, mentioned: “With humanity’s fast-growing want for energy and the reliance on petrochemicals, the invention of novel methods to create sustainable fuels and chemical substances has grow to be essential. We’d like radical disruption to the present R&D processes to create novel catalyzing brokers for the environment friendly synthesis of such fuels. Dunia’s AI-driven lab strategy is the inspiration of the invention of those world-changing catalysts.”
Catalysts crucially drive 90% of right now’s chemical processes and play an important function within the power transition. The worldwide marketplace for electrochemical applied sciences is projected to achieve 1.5 trillion {dollars} by 2050 (ERV), highlighting a big industrial alternative. With typical innovation cycles lasting many years, Dunia’s self-driving lab goals to cut back this timeframe to below three years, offering a compelling market alternative with immense environmental advantages.
“You possibly can’t resolve this drawback with software program alone however by combining machine studying with chemical robotics, we will iterate sooner and generate high-quality knowledge, drastically slicing down the time wanted to find new supplies,“ mentioned Dr. Alexander Hammer, Co-Founding father of Dunia.
Conventional chemical analysis depends on gradual and inefficient “design, make, take a look at, analyze” (DMTA) cycles. Dunia rethinks this course of through the use of superior chemical-robotic workflows and proprietary quantum chemistry-derived materials representations. These representations along with their in-house proprietary datasets give Dunia’s machine studying (ML) methods a aggressive edge over different black-box ML approaches, permitting for sooner materials discovery.
Dunia’s cutting-edge know-how addresses the pressing want for sustainable innovation and positions the corporate on the forefront of a trillion-dollar market alternative within the race to Internet Zero. Dunia has additionally been awarded with important grants from the IBB and the EIC Accelerator and lauded by prestigious packages just like the NZTC’s TechX Clear Vitality Accelerator, Henry Royce Institute, and RMI’s Third Spinoff Accelerator.
The founding staff consists of scientists and engineers with deep experience in chemistry, machine studying, and robotics, and the corporate is backed by angels together with Dr Udo Jung (founder and long-term chief of each the chemical substances and petrochemicals divisions at BCG), Dr Chris Gibson (CEO and co-founder of Recursion), Prof. Lee Cronin (Regius Chair of Chemistry and CEO of Chemify), and Dr Carlos Haertel (Former Government at GE and ex-CTO of Climeworks) who will function Chairman of the corporate board. Over the previous two years, Dunia has validated its know-how in a proof-of-concept on accelerated electrocatalyst ink formulation the place the platform outperformed human researchers in each velocity and efficiency.
Céline Passedouet, Funding Director at Elaia, mentioned: “We have been first drawn to the Dunia journey by the imaginative and prescient and ambition of the founders and have been satisfied by their capability to execute rapidly whereas retaining a strategic perspective. New supplies discovery requires deep scientific backgrounds for which the Dunia staff is well-positioned with a few years of expertise and revealed analysis.”
