Periodic Labs Debuts With $300M For AI Discovery | JQJO

Periodic Labs, founded by OpenAI’s Liam Fedus and former Google Brain researcher Ekin Dogus Cubuk, emerged from stealth with a $300 million seed round led by Felicis. The startup aims to fuse simulations, LLM reasoning and, soon, robotic powder-synthesis to accelerate materials discovery, starting with superconductors. OpenAI is not an investor. The team has set up a lab, begun working with experimental data, and hired noted talent, while robots still await training. Additional backers include Andreessen Horowitz, DST, NVentures, Accel, and angels Jeff Bezos, Elad Gil, Eric Schmidt and Jeff Dean.