Shows
Catalyst with Shayle KannInside a $300 million bet on AI for physical R&DA big problem with using artificial intelligence to discover new materials? It struggles to predict beyond its training data. That means AI might be better at optimizing known materials than discovering entirely new ones — like a room temperature superconductor or carbon-capture sorbents.
But since we last covered the topic in September 2024, a few things have changed. OpenAI released its powerful O1 reasoning model. Large language models have also gotten better at math, physics, and coding. And lab automation — robots mixing liquids and powders, running characterization tests — has improved, allowing for a higher volume of experiments.
So, can...
2025-11-0636 min
"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player AnalysisTraining an AI Scientist with Feedback from Reality, w- Liam Fedus & Ekin Dogus Cubuk (from a16z)Today’s special crosspost features a16z General Partner Anjney Midha with Liam Fedus and Ekin Dogus Cubuk of Periodic Labs. They discuss experiments in training frontier AI models on real-world physics lab experiments—rather than digital reward functions—and how coupling language models with automated materials synthesis could accelerate the discovery of room-temperature superconductors and transform R&D in advanced manufacturing.
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Core innovation: Periodic Labs is creating a "physically grounded reward function" by integrating experime...
2025-10-021h 00
TechCrunch Startup NewsFormer OpenAI and DeepMind researchers raise whopping $300M seed to automate science, plus, Whoop opens blood-testing service to what it says is a 350,000-person waitlistPeriodic Labs was founded by Ekin Dogus Cubuk and Liam Fedus. Cubuk led the materials and chemistry team at Google Brain and DeepMind, where one of his projects was, for instance, an AI tool called GNoME. Researchers say that tool discovered over 2 million new crystals in 2023, materials that could one day be used to power new generations of technology.
Whoop Advanced Labs offers health-screening blood tests from Quest Diagnostics that cover a variety of markers, from calcium to white blood cells. The platform integrates those results with the band’s continuous monitoring of activity, sleep, respiratory rat...
2025-10-0105 min
The a16z ShowBuilding an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next VentureScaling laws took us from GPT-1 to GPT-5 Pro. But in order to crack physics, we’ll need a different approach. In this episode, a16z General Partner Anjney Midha talks to Liam Fedus, former VP of post-training research and co-creator of ChatGPT at OpenAI, and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, former head of materials science and chemistry research at Google DeepMind, on their new startup Periodic Labs and their plan to automate discovery in the hard sciences.Follow Liam on X: https://x.com/LiamFedusFollow Dogus on X: https://x.com/ekindogusL...
2025-09-3054 minCatalyst with Shayle KannCan AI revolutionize materials discovery?AI is working its way across climate tech, helping companies discover giant lodes of ore, catch battery defects, and monitor energy infrastructure. Could it help us find revolutionary new materials, too?Turns out, it’s complicated. In this episode, Shayle talks to Ekin Dogus Cubuk, or Dogus, a researcher focused on materials at Google DeepMind. DeepMind is one of several players, including Microsoft, trying to discover new materials that could be used in things like better battery chemistries, powerful carbon-capture sorbents, and room-temperature superconductors. But so far, Dogus says AI-powered approaches haven’t actually yielded any c...
2024-09-1937 min
Materials and MegabytesPaper interview - Screening billions of candidates for solid lithium-ion conductors: A transfer learning approach for small dataWe discuss the paper Screening billions of candidates for solid lithium-ion conductors: A transfer learning approach for small data with the authors Dr. Ekin Dogus Cubuk and Dr. Austin D. Sendek.Papers discussed in the episode:Cubuk, E. D.; Sendek, A. D.; Reed, E. J. Screening Billions of Candidates for Solid Lithium-Ion Conductors: A Transfer Learning Approach for Small Data. J. Chem. Phys. 2019, 150 (21), 214701. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5093220.Sendek, A. D.; Yang, Q.; D. Cubuk, E.; N. Duerloo, K.-A.; Cui, Y.; J. Reed, E. Holistic Computational Structure Screening of More than 12000 Candidates for...
2019-09-1423 minMaterials and MegabytesEkin Dogus Cubuk (Season 1, Ep. 2)Our guest on this episode is Dr. Ekin Doğuş Çubuk from Google Brain.
2018-07-0228 min