Material AI platform startup Citrine Informatics closes $8 Million Convertible Note from Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings

Citrine Informatics announced today it has received additional capital in the form of an $8 million convertible note from Tencent Holdings, a leading provider of Internet value-added services in China, and B&C Holdings, an Austria-based private-equity firm. The note will help with international expansion and hiring the right talent across data science, engineering and sales to keep pace with high market demand.

Founded in 2013 by a team of seasoned materials scientists: Bryce Meredig, Greg Mulholland and Kyle Michel, Citrine Informatics helps to accelerate the chemicals and materials development cycle by combining access to the world’s largest materials dataset as well as a data platform and AI designed specifically for materials R&D. Citrine technology puts materials data into action. Citrine is backed by leading investors including, Innovation Endeavors, DCVC (Data Collective), Prelude Ventures, AME Cloud, XSeed Capital, Morado Ventures, and Ulu Ventures.

“Through working with Citrine, the materials science field now has the opportunity to embrace artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of new materials that will help us live smarter and safer lives,” said David Wallerstein, Chief eXploration Officer at Tencent. “Citrine’s capabilities will catalyze the discovery of many new mass market materials and help evolve the fundamental building blocks of civilization.”

The product manufacturing process has seen tremendous innovation fueled by automation and advanced analytics, yet the process for developing cutting-edge chemicals and alloys remains largely unchanged. Citrine dramatically reduces the time and cost of this process by providing a data platform of record, as well as artificial intelligence optimized to predict materials behavior. As a result, Citrine’s technology has helped some of the world’s largest organizations, including chemicals and product companies, hit overall R&D milestones in less than 50 percent of the time originally forecasted.

“The need to accelerate materials development is global and spans many industries, and this investment allows us to move more quickly into local markets,” said Greg Mulholland, CEO and founder of Citrine Informatics. “We are thrilled to partner for growth with Tencent and B&C Holdings.”

In addition, Citrine today announced a partnership agreement with UL, a global safety consulting and certification company that connects people to safer, more secure and more sustainable products, services, experiences and environments. UL has some of the most important datasets critical for products companies needing to identify the exact chemical raw materials in their development process and is a leader in commercial product data. This data can now be used on the Citrine platform, and the two companies are working together to significantly advance data-driven materials discovery and product development.

“UL has been at the forefront of product innovation for over a century,” said Henning Schwinum, Managing Director, Prospector, at UL. “Our cooperation with Citrine allows for an exciting exploration of new business opportunities that address previously insufficiently met market needs.”