Altrove, a deep tech startup creating sustainable alternatives for critical materials, has raised €3.7 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Contrarian Ventures, Emblem and strong angel investors like Thomas Clozel (CEO Owkin), Julien Chaumond (CTO HuggingFace) and Nikolaj Deichmann (3Shape). The funding will accelerate the development of their core technology, currently focusing on substitutes for rare-earth compounds used in transition technologies, electric vehicles, and advanced electronics. The company was founded in early 2024 by Cambridge alumnus Dr. Joonatan Laulainen and second-time founder Thibaud Martin at Entrepreneur First.
Unlike recent AI materials startups, Altrove does not stop at predicting what new materials could exist but focuses on finding the optimal recipe to manufacture alternative materials at scale. Altrove developed a proprietary characterization technology to iteratively learn from each experiment, accelerating the discovery process up to 100 times.
European demand for rare earth elements (REEs) is projected to increase five-fold by 2030, driven by the rapid growth of key transition technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicle (EV) batteries, which heavily depend on magnets.
Meanwhile, China controls over 90% of the global supply chain for rare earths, encompassing mining, processing, and magnet manufacturing. This dominance makes Western countries highly dependent and vulnerable to disruptions, price fluctuations, and exposure to unsustainable mining practices. In late 2023, China banned the export of rare earths processing technologies.
Altrove’s solution is a direct response to these economic and geopolitical challenges, by creating sustainable, domestically sourced materials for the energy transition.
The team builds on top of recent breakthroughs in AI-driven material discovery by major players such as DeepMind, which has predicted approx. 400,000 new stable inorganic materials, along with research projects by Microsoft, IBM or ETH Zurich. While these projects focus on foundational models and predicting what materials could exist, they do not address how to actually make them and turn them into reality. This is precisely where Altrove excels, finding the optimal methods to produce relevant materials at an industrial scale. They have already started to collaborate with the sourcing, manufacturing, and R&D departments of customers in the automotive, defense and electronics sectors, among other industries. It can deliver first results in weeks, not years as was previously the norm.
“Our customers need strategic materials to meet demand for key technologies, but most are facing major sourcing, regulatory and sustainability issues. We have put together a world-class team to help them build in a more ecological, cost-efficient and resilient way by providing alternative materials,” said Thibaud Martin, CEO of Altrove.
Altrove develops AI models coupled with an automated synthesis lab to accelerate the discovery process up to 100 times. It invented a proprietary technology at characterization to iteratively learn from each experiment.
“A key driver for our investment in Altrove is the team’s exceptional blend of industrial expertise and technological excellence. Having conducted over 100 customer interviews with leading component developers across Europe, they have developed a solution that truly bridges the gap between AI material discovery and industrial applications,” commented Rokas Peciulaitis, Founding Partner at Contrarian Ventures.
“Altrove stands out in the industry by moving beyond predictions to actual materials recipe finding. Their unique approach, combining AI and lab automation, enables them to synthesize and co-produce materials at scale. Additionally, their proprietary technology in characterization ensures optimal material quality. With a team led by a serial entrepreneur and a PhD in materials science, they are exceptionally well-equipped to address this challenge,” added Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan, form Emblem.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/07/paris-based-altrove-closes-e3-7-million-to-develop-sustainable-alternatives-to-critical-materials/
