Matter Machine

Recent timeline

• 2026-10-12Matter Machine, a Liverpool spin-out searching for inorganic crystals, raises a GBP 4M pre-Series A led by IP Group, and Oxford Nanopore's Gordon Sanghera joins to lead its commercialisationCapital

Founders' research on the record

Papers and results a founder of the company authored, from the timeline's bylines. Most come from before the company existed: they are the team's track record, not results the company has reported.

• 2026-10-12AriadneX splits a powder diffraction pattern into the phases already known and what is left over, to point chemists at the samples holding something newLevel 3 · Checked against existing evidence
• 2024-02-15A Liverpool lab steers its search with a model trained on known crystals and finds Li7Si2S7I, a new lithium conductor at about 10 mS/cmLevel 4 · Tested in the physical world
• 2021-09-21A model trained on known crystals ranks untried element combinations, and the fifth-ranked one, Li-Sn-S-Cl, yields a new lithium conductorLevel 4 · Tested in the physical world
• 2021-06-17Machine learning points a Liverpool lab at barium-yttrium titanates, and the new oxide it makes there has the lowest thermal conductivity reported for a first-row transition-metal oxideLevel 4 · Tested in the physical world
• 2017-06-08A computed energy map sends a Liverpool lab to one corner of a five-element oxide system, and two new crystal structures turn up thereLevel 4 · Tested in the physical world

Graded by how far the evidence went, not how good the result is. See the methodology.

People

Only people the AI4S.fyi record has named: in a round, a timeline entry, commentary, an interview or a sourced role. Not the full team.

Funding rounds tracked

• 2026-10-12Pre-Series A · £4MconfirmedLed by IP Group · With Northern Gritstone, University of Liverpool Enterprise Fund, Norrsken Evolve, LYVA Labs, Northern Universities Venture Fund (Parkwalk)Stated use: expanding the technical and commercial team, further development of the AI-powered discovery platform, and engagement with commercial partners

Each round links to its line on the funding record, with its source.

Also in Materials and chemistry on the funding board

The other companies the funding board files under the same field, latest round first. A list of what the record tracks, not a ranking or a market map.

• 2026-10-19MATARIASeed · tens of millions of yuanBuilds a multiscale materials model, from atoms to finished parts, that proposes candidates, narrows them with automated DFT and finite-element tools, and is tested by instrumented experiments; composites come first, then semiconductor and infrared materials.
• 2026-10-15HolyvoltVenture round · $45MTrains battery-materials models on 18 years of cell-cycling data from the high-throughput lab it acquired, Wildcat Discovery Technologies, and lets the models choose what the lab makes and cycles next. Its first material is DRX, a cathode family with neither nickel nor cobalt.
• 2026-10-14ScimplifyStrategic round · $25MDevelops manufacturing processes for specialty chemicals and critical materials in its own labs in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, then transfers them to a network of more than 500 partner factories. Its platform, Scinode, runs separate agents for research, manufacturing and quality control, choosing production routes and plants and tracking regulatory requirements.
• 2026-10-13AlbertSeries B · $55MSoftware and AI for chemistry and materials R&D at chemical and consumer-goods companies: it captures experiments, structures the data and lets scientists search and reason over it, suggest formulations and design experiments.
• 2026-09-24Soge Intelligent ComputingAngel · tens of millions of yuanAtomistic AI models with long-range interactions, fast parallel simulation and battery device modelling, sold to battery and chemicals firms; spun out of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
• 2026-09-23Azulene LabsPre-seed · $3.4MTrains physics-constrained AI chemistry models on quantum-mechanical data, to predict things like drug binding more accurately for pharma and chemicals.

All 17 in this field →