While everyone is trying to figure out how artificial intelligence can be used in various industries, the French startup Osium AI found interesting use cases for artificial intelligence — research and development in materials science.
Founded by Sarah Najmark and Luisa Bouneder, the startup raised a seed round of $2.6 million from Y Combinator, Singular, Kima Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Raise Phiture and several business angels (Julien Chaumond, Thomas Clozel, Isaac Oates, Liz Wessel, Ebert Hera Group, Patrick Joubert, Sequoia Scout and Atomico Angel).
“During my undergraduate studies, I had done research on materials, particularly in the field of cosmetics. And I had seen that material development methodologies were still very manual, with a lot of trial and error and a lot of methods that are mostly based on intuition,” Sarah Najmark told me.
After graduating, she joined Google X, the tech giant’s Moonshot division, and spent three years working on robotics and deep tech. He authored some patents.
“I was the chief technology officer, so I really owned the end-to-end AI pipelines in robotics and systems engineering,” he said.
As for co-founder Luisa Bouneder, she spent three years working on data products for industrial companies, specifically in the materials sector. He also noticed firsthand that there was a lot of trial and error that slowed down the development process.
“In discussions with many industrial companies, we also realized that there were really new challenges associated with sustainability, with the development of new materials: lighter materials – materials for aeronautics, for example – but also more durable, environmentally friendly materials, with optimized and greener production processes,” said Najmark.
“It’s an issue that really affects all types of industries, including manufacturing, packaging, aeronautics, aerospace, textiles and smartphones,” he added later in the conversation.
Image Credits: Osium AI
How does Osium AI actually work? It is about optimizing the feedback loop between materials synthesis and testing using a data-driven approach. With the startup’s proprietary technology, industrial companies can predict the physical properties of new materials based on a list of criteria. After that, Osium AI can also help improve and optimize these new materials, avoiding the common mistakes associated with trial and error.
Several industrial companies are already testing the Osium AI solution and seeing the potential. “Our users saw that our solution could allow them to speed up both the development and analysis of materials by a factor of 10. So from the beginning of our testing, we saw that we were delivering value,” said Najmark.
In many ways, Osium AI is just getting started. There are only two people working for the company (the two co-founders), so the startup will soon strengthen its team and start turning these industrial tests into proper contracts.
