Citrine Informatics Raises $7.6M to Revolutionize Materials-Driven Product Development With AI
Top Investors Back Team of Materials Scientists Using Artificial
Intelligence to Dramatically Accelerate Time to Market
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#AI–Citrine Informatics, the chemicals and materials artificial intelligence
(AI) platform, today announced it has closed a $7.6 million Series A led
by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation
Endeavors, DCVC
(Data Collective), and
Prelude Ventures. Jerry Yang’s AME
Cloud Ventures and XSeed
Capital also joined the round. Citrine combines AI with the world’s
largest materials database to help bring products to market faster. The
company will use the funding to accelerate its early successes with
Fortune 1000 customers.
“The next generation of advanced materials takes far too long to develop
today,” said Scott Brady, partner at Innovation Endeavors. “Citrine is
bringing together the domain experts, data and AI specifically optimized
to take advantage of known relationships in chemistry and physics to
revolutionize the speed at which materials can be used in the market.”
Factories are getting smarter, yet the chemicals and alloys that produce
cutting-edge products remain largely unchanged. The consequence of this
mismatch is painful delay and cost to manufacturers. According to the
National Academy of Sciences, new products can take two decades or more
to go from initial design to market, with the intermediate step of
developing new materials often taking the longest. Citrine dramatically
reduces the time and cost of this process by providing a data-driven
approach to predict and optimize materials behavior.
“DCVC is excited to back companies like Citrine that unite proprietary
data at massive scale, deeply defensible algorithms, and the ability to
transform huge vertical industries where the founders are experts,” said
Matt Ocko, a managing partner and co-founder of DCVC. “We believe
Citrine’s AI-powered materials innovation will drive the next wave of
explosive innovation and growth in product development – with markedly
lower cost for both manufacturer and customer alike.”
Citrine’s unique algorithms unify decades of high quality experimental
data both from sources internal to companies and from academic sources
and journals. This enriched data then feeds powerful AI systems that can
create new materials in record time. As a result, Citrine’s predictive
intelligence technology has helped organizations hit overall R&D and
manufacturing milestones in less than 50% of the time originally
forecast.
“AME Cloud seeks companies building infrastructure at every level of the
data stack,” added Jerry Yang, founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures
and co-founder of Yahoo. “Citrine’s unique approach brings together
public and private data sources to create a materials ‘brain’ in the
cloud and an opportunity to fundamentally change how advanced products
are developed.”
Citrine was founded by a team of seasoned materials scientists. The
management team includes Mr. Greg Mulholland, CEO, Dr. Bryce Meredig,
Chief Science Officer, and Dr. Kyle Michel, Chief Technology Officer.
Scott Brady from Innovation Endeavors and Mark Cupta from Prelude
Ventures have joined the Citrine Board.
“Materials development has traditionally lagged behind other elements of
product innovation,” said Greg Mulholland, CEO of Citrine. “Our AI
technology enables our customers to launch faster than the competition
as well as gain significant market share and margin. We’re excited to
put this funding to work to transform the product development cycle for
even more Citrine customers.”
To learn more about Materials Science, check out the timely resources
provided by the Center
of Excellence on Advanced Materials created by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
About Citrine Informatics
Citrine
Informatics accelerates the product development cycle by combining
access to the world’s largest materials database with AI designed by
materials scientists. Citrine is backed by leading investors including, Innovation
Endeavors, DCVC
(Data Collective), Prelude
Ventures, AME
Cloud Ventures, XSeed
Capital, Ulu
Ventures, and Morado
Ventures. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, CA. Follow
us at @Citrine_io.
Contacts
Citrine Informatics
Andrea Fuller, 415-999-6232
[email protected]