Union Square Ventures invests in alqem: using AI to find strong magnetic materials without rare earths

alqem uses AI to design strong magnetic materials that do not rely on rare earths, and Union Square Ventures has announced an investment to support it. The spread of electric transportation and the growth of robotics have driven up demand for motors and actuators, and making powerful magnets from cheap and abundant elements is seen as a key breakthrough. Before starting this mission, the team built the largest open materials dataset, and it accumulates proprietary data through a closed loop in which the model proposes candidate materials, the team synthesizes them, and measured results flow back to make the next round of predictions more accurate, forming a compounding advantage as the model improves. alqem is hiring.