#66 - Robina, Matthew, Vera - Contrarian, Voyager Ventures & Apex Ventures - AI for Materials: Breakthrough or Illusion?

Sign up to New Wave's newsletter. *** This week on New Wave Weekly: 👉 AI won’t magically invent new materials AlphaFold worked because biology had great data. Inorganic materials don’t. Sparse datasets, missing thermodynamics, and poor characterization remain the biggest blockers. 👉 The real moat is synthesis, not models From rare-earth-free magnets to catalysts, value is created in the lab: making, characterizing, and scaling materials that actually work in the real world. 👉 Vertical beats generalist (for now) Foundational models are capital-intensive moonshots. Highly verticalized plays, magnets, catalysts, specific industrial use cases, have a much clearer path to market. 👉 Commercialization is brutally hard Discovery is step one. Producing at scale, at cost, and getting industry adoption is where most materials stories break, graphene being the cautionary tale. 👉 Europe’s materials moment? With critical minerals concentrated in China, supply-chain security is creating real pull from industrial players, not just curiosity, but urgency. *** Wave Makers: Matt - Voyager Ventures Robina - Contrarian Vera - Apex Ventures Hugo - New Wave This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newwavenewsletter.substack.com