Orbital Materials

Artificial intelligence consumes a huge amount of electricity, much of it generated with the fossil fuels that are warming the planet. But at a lab in New Jersey, scientists from the start-up Orbital Materials are using AI to discover materials that could slow climate change. Founded in 2022, Orbital has created an AI model to predict the properties of new materials from public data about existing materials, computer simulations, and experiments in the company’s own laboratory. Orbital is using its AI model to search for cleantech materials, such as catalysts for biobased chemical production and products to improve water treatment. The company’s most advanced material is a sorbent that it hopes will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a lower cost than current technologies. Before starting Orbital with James Gin-Pollock and Daniel Miodovnik, Jonathan Godwin had been training AI to discover new materials at DeepMind, Google’s AI research subsidiary.