Advanced materials (2024)

1. Can AI really help make new stuff?

   Can AI conquer the material world? Google DeepMind claimed last November that its AI tool had discovered more than 2m new crystalline materials.

   The company presented the results as “an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity”. Since then, there have been doubts raised as to whether DeepMind overstated its achievement.

   But we will see more AI-aided attempts to develop materials. For example, DeepMind alum Jonathan Godwin is the brains behind London-based startup Orbital Materials, which is developing computer models to identify the best formulas for products like batteries free of rare-earth minerals.

   CuspAI, also in the UK, makes algorithms for designing new materials. The company raised $30m in June and has recruited AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton to its advisory board.

2. The high stakes of new factories

   Magnus Håkansson, the interim CEO of Sweden’s Renewcell, sounded the alarm last year, when he warned that retailers’ sluggish demand was putting a serious strain on his business.

   Renewcell opened its first commercial recycling plant in 2023, with a capacity to produce 60k metric tons of circulose, a trademarked pulp made from recycled cotton and used in creating clothing materials.

   However, the volume of orders it expected from Zara, H&M (which owned a 10% shareholding) and other retailers never materialised. The company filed for bankruptcy in February 2024.

   Any startup with new materials needs customers that are willing to change their buying practices — it’s almost too obvious to note, but without locking in enough demand, any company will quickly find itself in big trouble.

3. Can the man with ‘the Midas touch’ strike gold again?

   Newcomer Syre is hoping to succeed where Renewcell failed. Syre was started by the man behind H2 Green Steel, the world’s first large-scale green steel plant. H2 Green Steel incidentally attracted the biggest raises in Europe’s materials sector in 2023 and so far in 2024).

   Swedish financier Harald Mix has serious form — he’s also one of the key people behind battery unicorn Northvolt. WithSyre he hopes to recycle polyester back into a material that can be reused for new clothing.

   There’s a lot of work needed to clean up fashion. Polyester-based clothes can also discharge hundreds of thousands of microplastic fibres into the water systems. Clothing giant H&M (again) was one of the backers of Syre’s $100m Series A in May, which demonstrates the industry is serious about finding a viable recycling alternative.

   Costs will ultimately be a crucial factor in how far Syre goes: if making clothes from so-called virgin plastics material remains cheaper (or more profitable) — and for now, that is the case — then new materials will struggle to win out.

4. The EU’s €500m materials bet

   The EU is introducing a raft of new legislation to force companies to adopt greener materials — chief among them is the extended producer responsibility mechanism, which makes clothing brands responsible for the disposal of each item they introduce to the market.

   EU lawmakers are also building a €500m warchest. Its made up of half EU funds, half private investment — to help companies accelerate the deployment of advanced materials.

   The plan will cover materials with novel properties, such as metallic nanoparticles to enhance energy conversion in solar panels, and sodium-ion batteries which provide more sustainable energy storage.

   The added motivation for this push is to limit European reliance on materials — like lithium and cobalt — that have vulnerable supply chains.

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