Altrove scores $10m to cook up AI-designed alternatives to critical materials

Altrove has raised $10m in a seed round led by Alven, with participation from Contrarian Ventures, Bpifrance (via its Digital Venture fund) and Emblem.

The round brings Altrove’s total funding to approximately $14m, following a €3.7m pre-seed in July 2024. The startup's existing backers include startup incubator Entrepreneurs First, and notable angels such as Hugging Face co-founder and CTO Julien Chaumond and Thomas Plantenga, founder and CEO of Vinted.

Founded in early 2024 by Thibaud Martin and Joonatan Laulainen via Entrepreneurs First, Altrove is building a platform that uses AI and so-called “automated labs” to design and synthesise new materials. More specifically, alternatives to critical materials such as lithium, which is mostly imported from outside Europe and comes with a hefty environmental price tag.

“Western nations cannot afford to be dependent on imports for the very materials that power electrification,” said Martin.

'AI scientist' for material discovery

Altrove’s technology identifies promising new materials and then figures out how to make them. Its software generates detailed “recipes” that define the ingredients, proportions, temperatures, and timings needed to create each compound.

The company then tests these in automated labs using IP-protected characterisation tools – developed by Laulainen, a materials scientist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge – to verify whether the material performs as predicted. Each test feeds back into the AI system, refining the process.

“Our AI acts as a scientist - designing and executing experiments without human intervention - so we can develop new materials faster, cheaper and at the scale industry requires,” said Laulainen.

Altrove hopes that its proprietary characterisation techniques will help it differentiate within an increasingly crowded AI-for-materials-discovery landscape, which includes big players such as CuspAI and Orbital Materials.

So far, Altrove’s “AI scientist” has created rare-earth-free, cobalt-free magnetic materials for high-performance motors and lead-free compounds for sensors and actuators. The company has secured over a dozen partnerships with potential customers in automotive, energy, and heavy industry.

Armed with fresh funding, it's looking to ramp up R&D with the aim to get its first products live within two years.