The company was founded by Liam Fedus, a former vice president of research at OpenAI, and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, a former research scientist at Google’s DeepMind. According to the company’s website, Periodic Labs is developing autonomous robotic laboratories to run experiments to create custom data for its AI models. The San Francisco-based company hopes that by running thousands of physics and chemistry experiments it can quickly iterate to discover new materials. It is currently trying to find new superconductors that work at higher temperatures. The company is also currently working with the semiconductor industry, which utilizes Periodic’s AI scientist for research and development.
This vision has already attracted a significant roster of talent. Periodic Labs has hired more than 20 researchers from Meta, OpenAI and DeepMind, many of whom walked away from substantial equity packages to join the startup, the New York Times reported last year.