A newly founded startup, Periodic Labs — led by distinguished former researchers from OpenAI and Google Brain/DeepMind — has emerged from stealth with an exceptional US $300 million seed funding round.
The startup was co-founded by Liam Fedus, a former VP of Research at OpenAI who contributed to the creation of ChatGPT, and Ekin Doğuş Çubuk (often called “Doge”), who led the materials & chemistry team at Google Brain/DeepMind and pioneered the GNoME AI tool that discovered millions of new crystals in 2023.
Periodic Labs’s mission is ambitious: to build what it calls AI-scientists — systems that can not only simulate and reason, but also run physical experiments via robotic labs, collect data, iterate, and produce new material discoveries. Their first target: advanced superconductors and novel materials with broad technological implications.
This round attracted a who’s-who of top-tier investors: leading venture firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Felicis, alongside strategic investors like NVIDIA’s venture arm NVentures, plus angel backers such as Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and Jeff Dean.
The emergence of Periodic Labs underscores a broader shift: investors are increasingly betting not just on AI tools that analyze internet-text data, but on systems that generate new data and discoveries in the real world — leveraging robotics, simulation, materials science and machine learning combined.
