Orbital Industries raises $50M Series B to scale AI-designed materials
What's the deal? Orbital Industries, a London and San Francisco-based startup that uses AI to design advanced materials, has raised a $50M Series B led by PluralDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. NventuresDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Nvidia's venture arm), Radical VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Compound, and Fly VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → also participated.
The company — which recently rebranded from Orbital Materials — plans to use the capital to scale its first two data centre products, grow its 50-person team, and expand its AI platform into industrial applications beyond data centres.
Orbital's core AI model, called Orb, predicts and simulates the quantum mechanical behaviour of atoms. The company says it can simulate 100,000 atoms on a single GPU, running roughly 10 times faster than alternatives from Meta and Microsoft.
Why now? AI-driven materials discovery is a hot sector. Competitors CuspAI raised $100M in a Series A last September, and Periodic Labs pulled in a $300M seed round around the same time. But Orbital is betting on a different model: vertical integration.
Rather than discover compounds and license the IP to chemicals giants like BASF or PPG, Orbital sells the materials directly. It also uses AI to optimise manufacturing and builds its own hardware — an approach cofounder and chief executive officer Jonathan Godwin, a former Google DeepMind researcher, says sets it apart.
"We don't sell that software. We have hardware, manufacturing and advanced materials teams, labs and things like that, and we use that software internally to develop new advanced materials and hardware devices, and sell those hardware devices," Godwin told Fortune .
What could go wrong? Vertical integration is capital-intensive and harder to scale than licensing. Orbital must prove it can manufacture novel materials at volume while competing against well-funded rivals taking a lighter-touch approach.
The company's initial products target data centres — a booming but concentrated market where qualification cycles with major chip providers can be long and exacting.
The signal: With over $450M deployed into AI-driven materials startups in recent months — including CuspAI's $100M Series A and Periodic Labs' $300M seed — investor appetite for the space is surging, yet Orbital's vertically integrated model and repeat backing from Nvidia's venture arm suggest the smart money sees a premium in companies that don't just discover materials but manufacture and sell them. As data centre energy density climbs, the race to deliver novel cooling and power solutions could reward the startups that control the full pipeline from simulation to production.
Read more: Fortune
