Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the materials sector. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising material informatics startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Material Informatics Startups
Using our StartUs Insights Platform, covering 1.116.000+ startups & emerging companies, we looked at innovation in the field of materials. For this research, we identified 173 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies were chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and technology among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & emerging companies developing innovative material informatics solutions. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 173 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
OntoChem – Semantic Search
Material informatics uses principles from informatics to speed up the discovery, selection, and development of materials. Material startups, as well as larger companies, invest heavily in research to discover materials with better or novel functionalities. Semantic search solutions help material startups navigate the large volumes of research output and discover new solutions faster.
OntoChem is a German startup that offers semantic search solutions for materials, pharmaceuticals, and other tech-driven industries. It uses text mining, natural language processing (NLP), and semantic data extraction to obtain insights from internal and external data. SciWalker queries full-text documents to search for chemical structures and substructures to provide very granular results.
Noble.AI – Data Analytics
In comparison to existing computational solutions, informatics takes a more data-driven approach. Materials startups generate vast amounts of data from various sources, such as ongoing research, manufacturing facilities, and customer requirements. Materials informatics-based solutions combine them in a single infrastructure for advanced analytics. It also integrates research and development (R&D) with manufacturing, which allows them to scale and adapt faster to meet changes in demand.
The US-based startup Noble.AI develops data analytics solutions for R&D. Blueprint is a data wrangling tool that navigates both structured and unstructured data. It helps enterprises unlock insights from scattered data sources and different data formats. The solution finds applications in aluminum alloy design and high-speed optics design, as well as sustainable polymer development and organic compound synthesis, among other use cases.
Sustanalyze – Data-Driven Simulation
Traditional simulation techniques use principles from physics to predict the behavior of materials under different conditions. Data-driven simulation combines and integrates real-time manufacturing data from sensors. This improves analytics and enables better predictions, and also reduces the number of testing iterations required.
Sustanalyze is a Dutch startup that offers a manufacturing R&D platform. The data-driven simulation employs advanced analytics powered by scientific algorithms. It significantly reduces iteration time to deliver profitable, safer, and sustainable materials. The solution achieves this by reducing the need for experimentation while also effectively channeling resources.
Innophore – Enzyme Discovery
Enzymes find applications in the materials sector as they catalyze reactions required for the production of different materials or their building blocks. Some enzymes also possess the ability to modify a biomaterial to alter its properties. Since enzymes are crucial to the development of a range of functional materials, startups now look for more efficient solutions to discover new enzymes.
Austrian startup Innophore provides a solution for enzyme discovery. It combines bioinformatics with artificial intelligence (AI) to mine structural databases using three-dimensional search templates called catalophores. The startup’s Catalophore platform allows companies to search for enzymes with new or altered properties for use in their chemical or material requirements.
ToxTrack – Toxicological Analysis
Certain materials, particularly chemicals used in products such as cosmetics or drugs, must meet particular regulatory criteria before they are approved for sale. This involves toxicology analysis to test for any possible adverse reactions. While traditionally done with animal modes, in-silico methods are now gaining support across the industry. Material informatics allows startups to computationally predict interactions between chemicals and surfaces, instead of using animals.
ToxTrack is a US-based startup that develops cheminformatics technologies. The solution REACHAcross uses machine learning and chemical toxicology databases for toxicological analysis. It assesses the risk of potential toxic effects such as skin irritation or more significant damage from new products. This, in turn, helps chemical companies identify priority areas for R&D efforts to meet regulatory compliance.
What About The Other 168 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence so you can achieve your goals faster. The 5 materials informatics startups showcased above are promising examples out of 173 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
