Orbital Industries, a startup using AI to design advanced materials, has raised a $50 million Series B funding round led by the venture capital firm Plural. Nventures, the venture arm of AI chip company Nvidia, which had previously invested in Orbital, joined the round along with other prior investors Radical Ventures, Compound and Fly Ventures.
The company, which has offices in London and San Francisco, recently rebranded from Orbital Materials. It said the new capital will scale commercial deployment of its first two products—both of which are aimed at the data center industry—and grow its 50-person team. It also plans to develop its AI platform for industrial applications beyond data centers.
In the past two years, a number of startups have launched hoping to use AI models to discover new materials, including everything from longer-lasting batteries to biodegradable plastics to nonstick coatings that don’t rely on toxic ‘forever chemicals.’ Among those competing with Orbital Industries are companies such as CuspAI, which raised $100 million in a Series A round in September, and Periodic Labs, which raised a $300 million seed round around the same time.But Orbital Industries is pursuing a different business model than these other startups, Jonathan Godwin, the former Google DeepMind researcher who is Orbital’s cofounder and CEO, told Fortune. Rather than simply use AI models to find new chemical compounds and then license the intellectual property out to large chemicals or coatings companies such as Germany’s BASF or Pittsburgh-based PPG, Orbital intends to sell the materials its AI models discover directly.
