This "Superintelligence Platform" just raised $200m in seed funding

The best catalyst for the electrochemical reaction required to produce green hydrogen is a rare metal called iridium. As one of the scarcest elements on earth, it’s considered more valuable than gold, silver, or platinum — so finding a cheaper substitute could dramatically impact prices of the fuel. 

That metal, said Lila Sciences senior VP of physical sciences John Gregoire, is, “a good exemplar problem” for his company, which is building a scientific superintelligence platform with an autonomous lab.

“There’s only one critical material to be discovered — an oxygen evolution catalyst that doesn’t contain iridium or comparably scarce and expensive materials,” Gregoire told Latitude Media. “That’s a tractable problem with an immediate pathway to have an impact on the world, and where each discovery is a sizable advancement of the field.”

Lila Sciences launched in 2023 with the goal to combine artificial intelligence, robotics, and human research to increase the speed and scale of climate breakthroughs. At the start, the team understood how much depended on tangibly demonstrating the potential of the autonomous lab and machine learning algorithms; if the company managed to make even one or two discoveries in its crucial early years, it would be clear that they were onto something, Gregoire said. 

And so they did.