SOLVE
Assembly Line
Imperial and BASF spinout SOLVE to digitally transform chemical manufacturing
Pandemic-beating drugs could enter production more quickly and agrichemicals such as fertilisers could be produced with fewer toxic raw materials thanks to technology from the new company SOLVE. The spinout has been launched by Imperial and global chemical company BASF under an innovative partnership model, with funding from BASF subsidiary Chemovator in a pre-seed round led by venture capital firm Creator Fund.
It is using innovative chemical processing techniques to build up large sets of data on chemical reactions, which it will use to train machine learning models to rapidly predict the optimal ways to manufacture high-value chemicals. The company is building up experimental data sets using novel techniques in flow chemistry, an advanced form of processing in which reactions are carried out in a continuous flow rather than in batch vessels. The technology is designed to enable chemical companies to scale manufacturing of new chemicals more quickly and to optimise manufacturing processes.