Discovered Materials Raises $9M to Use AI for Cooler Chips

Discovered Materials has raised $9 million in seed funding to use artificial intelligence to discover new materials that could make semiconductor chips more efficient and reduce heat.

The funding round was led by Lightspeed India Partners, with participation from Peak XV Partners and angel investors including Paul Graham, Gokul Rajaram and Thariq Shihipar. The startup emerged from Y Combinator and was founded by Advaith Sridhar and Akash Ramdas.

Discovered Materials uses AI agents and physics models to identify and test potential new materials for integrated circuits. The company says its system can explore thousands of material possibilities every day, compared with the much smaller number researchers could test manually.

The startup is focusing on the growing heat and energy challenges linked to AI chips and data centers. It plans to develop materials that could eventually be used in GPUs and other semiconductor technologies.

Discovered Materials also aims to patent promising discoveries and license them to chipmakers.