Materials AI Platform Citrine Informatics Raises $20 Million In Funding

By Noah Long • Oct 19, 2019
  • First materials artificial intelligence operating platform Citrine Informatics recently announced it raised $20 million in funding

Citrine Informatics — the developer of the first materials artificial intelligence operating platform — announced it has raised $20 million in Series B funding. This round of funding was co-led by Prelude Ventures and Innovation Endeavors with participation from Moore Strategic Ventures, Next47, and several other investors. This round of funding will help support the commercial growth of its core product Citrine Platform as well as the expansion in business development and sales efforts in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Citrine was launched by a team of seasoned materials scientists. The management team includes CEO Greg Mulholland and chief science officer Bryce Meredig, Ph.D. And Citrine’s technology has been deployed at some of the largest global chemicals and materials companies including Panasonic, LANXESS, and BASF.

“Speed to market and the need to customize products are critical factors driving the materials and chemicals industry today. Customers are pushing the industry for bespoke requirements at a faster pace,” said Mulholland. “Innovative companies are investing in the Citrine Platform to create an internal AI capability and meet this customer demand. This technology is changing the speed at which companies can develop green, efficient, performant materials and chemicals and shaping how companies organize themselves. We are proud to partner with investors who share our mission to push the industry forward and to continue to enable the next generation of sustainable innovation.”

The technological innovation behind the Citrine Platform reduces the time and cost of materials and chemicals development by combining materials-specific data handling and storage, scalable compute for AI and data processing, and modular composable AI units optimized to predict materials behavior.

“The materials and chemicals industry is changing rapidly based on the need to produce products faster and more sustainably,” added Mark Cupta, partner at Prelude Ventures. “Citrine’s platform, a unique combination of domain-specific data management and AI, is a force hastening the revolution already underway.”

The Citrine Platform has helped some of the world’s largest organizations — including chemicals and product companies — hit overall R&D milestones in 50-70% percent of the time originally forecast and has enabled totally new materials product lines.

“The next generation of advanced materials takes far too long to develop today. Citrine’s approach – combining new and under-leveraged sources of data, advanced computation, and engineering – dramatically reduces the time and cost of materials development in an industry ripe for change,” explained Scott Brady, partner at Innovation Endeavors. “We believe that Citrine will continue to make big impacts in the materials space, and we are excited to expand our support.”