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GenAI-powered Battery Developer Chemix Closes Its $20M Series A Led by Ibex Investors
Chemix, the pioneer in leveraging a vertically integrated and GenAI-powered self-driving lab for the rapid development of next-gen EV batteries, announced the completion of $20 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ibex Investors, an investment firm with $1 billion in assets under management, with participation from Mayfield Fund, Berkeley SkyDeck, and Urban Innovation Fund. The round also included strategic investors including BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture Fund (SIVF), Global Brain’s KDDI Open Innovation Fund III (KDDI CVC), and Porsche Ventures, the venture capital arm of the sports car manufacturer Porsche AG.
To practically and effectively integrate GenAI into the battery development process, Chemix embarked on a journey from day one to build its own battery lab and collect its own data - creating its battery-specific MIX™ R&D platform. In less than three years, the company has tested 10,000 commercial-format pouch, cylindrical, and prismatic cells, screened through 4,000 unique electrolyte formulations and more than 2,000 pairs of unique electrode designs, and collected a total of 4.5 million cycles. The high-quality, specially curated, and AI-trainable data, all gathered through physical experimentation, have played a critical role in training Chemix’s proprietary transformer-based deep neural network, which then autonomously generates better materials and cell designs on a daily basis on behalf of battery engineers and scientists. For Chemix, this marks just the beginning of truly unleashing the full potential of GenAI to transform the decades-old battery industry, one data point at a time – a vision that is shared among both existing and newly joining Chemix investors.
1MRobotics Launches Out of Stealth With $25m In Series A Funding
1MRobotics, a startup developing next-generation robotic dark stores, or as they classify them - robotic nano-fulfillment centers, announced today that Ibex Investors led their A-round funding along with its existing backers Emerge VC, Target Global, and INT3, with participation from other prominent investors. The Series A funding brings its total raised to $25 million, including a previous seed round of $8.5 million.
They set out to develop fully automated, small, and flexible dark stores enabling effective and profitable last-mile operations for the world’s largest brands and service providers.