German AI start-up raises funds

The Berlin-based start-up Dunia Innovations has raised $11.5 million to accelerate the discovery of advanced materials by combining machine learning with robotic lab technology . The company is focused on electrocatalysts for making green hydrogen or ammonia and on converting carbon dioxide into chemicals . With the standard research sequence of design, make, test, and analyze, bringing a new catalyst to market can take several years or even more. Dunia reckons its approach can reduce the timeline to less than 3 years. “You can’t solve this problem with software alone, but by combining machine learning with chemical robotics, we can iterate faster and generate high-quality data, drastically cutting down the time needed to discover new materials,” computational chemist Alexander Hammer, who is Dunia’s CEO and cofounder, says in a press release. Dunia says it will direct a chunk of the funds to hiring new talent, including people with expertise in