The future of chemistry is robotic.
Sir William Ramsay once said “The country which is in advance of the rest of the world in chemistry will also be foremost in wealth and in general prosperity.” We wholly agree with the 1905 Nobel prize winner and discoverer of the noble gases; chemistry today is as crucial to our society as semiconductors and microprocessors. The future of chemistry is robotic.
CheMastery is delivering AI-driven modular robotics that can automate 98% of processes in the lab, allowing lab chemists to do what they do best, and develop new frontiers in production, synthesis and discovery.
We’re delighted to back co-founders Anna and Stefan, as they push the boundaries of what is possible for the new generation of chemists, and allow world-changing chemicals to be brought to market in a fraction of the time.
Many of the world’s best founders start by solving a problem they have experienced first hand. With chemistry PhDs from the University of Cambridge and Max-Planck Institute, Anna and Stefan have over 20 years’ combined experience working in world-class laboratories, where they had been plagued by spending 80% of their time doing manual, repetitive tasks.
When you think of chemistry, you might assume that labs today already use lots of automation and AI. But most of today’s molecules, materials and catalysts - along with the remaining 96% of manufactured goods that are touched by chemistry - are made almost exclusively by hand.
Performed manually, synthesis and testing workflows are slow and increasingly expensive. Know-how is difficult to transfer and over 80% of work is not reproducible, often due to human error, or an incomplete knowledge of the processes at work.
As we enter a new era of molecule discovery using AI, it is the physical lab infrastructure which is one of the biggest blockers in getting life-changing drugs and products from reaching the market in quantity.
While robotics has transformed other manufacturing processes, the laboratory has been more difficult to automate. The problem has been a huge variance in requirements for different chemical workflows. Most solutions have only been able to automate a fraction, less than 5%, of chemical processes. CheMastery is different. Its AI-powered V1 can be set up in minutes for 98% of all processes regardless of the scale or complexity of a workflow and manufacturing process.
This modular solution is set to transform chemical workflows across both R&D and manufacturing. CheMastery’s modular robot allows ingredients to be automatically processed into the desired product, using their AI system, which standardizes chemical workflows, and turns them into programmable and repeatable recipes.
CheMastery increases the productivity of chemists by 3,000%. If a human can do it, CheMastery can automate it. Testing cycles can be sped up, and made reproducible more quickly, resulting in higher quality products, which will reach consumers an order-of-magnitude faster and, consequently, at lower production cost.
At 7percent, we had been hunting for a company taking CheMastery’s programmatic approach. While many are focused on drug discovery, CheMastery is delivering a step change for laboratories today, transforming their initial $177bn market of small to medium size production labs.
This is just the beginning of CheMastery’s grand plans to revolutionise the chemist’s laboratory. We’re very excited to be supporting them on this journey.