Periodic Labs came out of stealth on Tuesday with a war chest of $300 million as 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 the materials […]
Former OpenAI and DeepMind researchers raise whopping $300M seed to automate science Read More »
In the wake of a disaster, it’s not uncommon for people to look for answers anywhere they can find them. The devastating floods in Texas are no exception. There are many potential reasons why so many people were killed by the swiftly rising waters, but one that some people have settled on is a practice
A cloud seeding startup did not cause the Texas floods Read More »
Can AI speed up aspects of the scientific process? Microsoft appears to think so. At the company’s Build 2025 conference on Monday, Microsoft announced Microsoft Discovery, a platform that taps agentic AI to “transform the [scientific] discovery process,” according to a press release provided to TechCrunch. Microsoft Discovery is “extensible,” Microsoft says, and can handle
Microsoft wants to tap AI to accelerate scientific discovery Read More »
Anthropic is launching an AI for Science program to support researchers working on “high-impact” scientific projects, with a focus on biology and life sciences applications. The program, announced Monday, will offer up to $20,000 in Anthropic API credits over a six-month period to “qualified” researchers who’ll be selected based on their “contributions to science, the potential
Anthropic launches a program to support scientific research Read More »
FutureHouse, an Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit that aims to build an “AI scientist” within the next decade, has launched its first major product: a platform and API with AI-powered tools designed to support scientific work. Many, many startups are racing to develop AI research tools for the scientific domain, some with massive amounts of VC funding
FutureHouse releases AI tools it claims can accelerate science Read More »
Last month, Google announced the “AI co-scientist,” an AI the company said was designed to aid scientists in creating hypotheses and research plans. Google pitched it as a way to uncover new knowledge, but experts think it — and tools like it — fall well short of PR promises. “This preliminary tool, while interesting, doesn’t
Experts don’t think AI is ready to be a ‘co-scientist’ Read More »
The modern method of coming up with new materials is to make something and then use a computer to work out whether the material came out correctly. But what if you flipped that around, using generative-AI-driven software to design the material in the first place? That’s the premise behind Cambridge, U.K.-based CuspAI, which has now
CuspAI raises $30M to create a Gen-AI-driven search engine for new materials Read More »
