AI4Materials leading company "Kaiwujiji" has completed hundreds of millions of yuan in Series Angel+ financing to accelerate the construction of intelligent infrastructure for materials.
On March 24th, "Kaiwuji", a leading enterprise in the field of AI4Materials, announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan in Series Angel + financing. This round was led by Monolith, with follow - on investments from Photon Venture Capital and JAFCO Asia. Existing shareholders such as Hillhouse Capital, IDG, BlueRun Ventures, BV Baidu Ventures, and L2F Light Source Entrepreneurs Fund increased their investments beyond the quota. Light Source Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The financing will be mainly used for strengthening the construction of the material large - model capabilities, promoting the industrialization of multiple self - developed material pipelines, and continuously enhancing the construction of a globally top - notch composite talent team.
As a full - stack material innovation platform that builds a closed - loop system of "model - experiment - mass production", Kaiwuji focuses on the full - process closed - loop of material IP. From large - scale model training, inference, experimental verification to ton - scale mass production, it is committed to achieving the efficient transformation of materials from "discovery" to "mass production".
Kaiwuji was founded by Dr. Lu Ziheng, an internationally renowned scientist in the field of AI4Materials. Dr. Lu once served as the chief researcher at Microsoft Research and the head of the materials team at the Center for Scientific Intelligence. He has long been engaged in large - scale deep - learning R & D and its application research in the field of material design, and has more than 10 years of experience in energy materials, laboratory, and industrial implementation. Dr. Yang Mengyang, the co - founder, once served as a senior research manager at Microsoft. He has a cross - research background in optics, electronics, and materials. He once led the team to participate in Microsoft's storage and materials R & D projects, promoting related work from proof - of - concept, prototype system construction to system - level deployment. Dr. Ren Yu, the industrial CTO, has more than 20 years of industrial implementation experience. He has long been responsible for strategic product selection, engineering, and mass - production promotion of complex technical systems at leading material enterprises such as BASF.
In addition, the company has built a top - notch composite team covering model pre - training, Agentic AI, laboratory R & D, and industrial transformation. The core members are from world - class industrial institutions and universities at home and abroad, such as Microsoft Research, Google DeepMind, BASF, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, Columbia University, Tsinghua University, and Beijing Zhongguancun College, forming the full - chain capabilities from underlying research, model R & D to engineering scale - up, and enabling Kaiwuji to have the industrial insight of "starting with the end in mind".
Kaiwuji adheres to the scaling route with weak prior constraints. It has built a synthetic data and high - throughput physical experiment data environment with an underlying high - concurrency mechanism. Through large - scale pre - training, the model can learn more generalizable representations of material and chemical spaces, improving the ability to search, generate, and screen unknown material systems, thus breaking through the limitations of artificial chemical priors on the innovation space and more efficiently finding high - value, breakthrough source material IP. Based on this ability, the company has built a dual - engine architecture of "Prophet Prediction Engine + Creator Generation Engine". Prophet is used for high - precision broad - spectrum property prediction and screening, while Creator is for material generation and reverse design across element systems. Meanwhile, the company has established a data infrastructure with a high concurrency of millions of levels, and the construction of laboratories, automated high - throughput platforms, and kilogram - level verification platforms has also been launched, accelerating the formation of an underlying capability system for the coordinated promotion of models, experiments, and engineering.
The founding team has accumulated rich experience in the direction of material large - models and industrial transformation. Relevant research has verified the effectiveness of the Scaling Law in material large - models and was published in "Nature" in 2025. In previous research and industrial practices, the team has also promoted the transformation of various high - value materials from model design to experimental verification and device - level implementation: significantly shortening the R & D cycle in the direction of solid - state electrolytes; for the first time, systematically exploring the thermal conductivity distribution in more than 640,000 inorganic crystal structures in the direction of thermal management materials, and some key thermal - conductive materials have been verified by third - parties; in the direction of recyclable PCB substrate materials, material synthesis has been achieved, and device - level products meeting real - world working conditions have been processed. These accumulations form an important foundation for Kaiwuji's current technical route and capability system.
Kaiwuji adheres to the approach of "starting with the end in mind". From the project initiation, it simultaneously considers manufacturability, stability, and scale - up constraints, promoting the transformation of materials from laboratory iteration to kilogram - level verification, pilot - scale expansion, and real - world application. The company not only promotes self - developed material pipelines but also cooperates with industrial partners for co - research, exploring new business models in the field of AI materials. Currently, the company has carried out key explorations in high - value directions such as new - energy batteries, cold storage, embodied heat - dissipation materials, and superconducting materials, and continues to expand more material scenarios with industrial potential. In the future, Kaiwuji will further deepen the model - experiment closed - loop and promote the incubation and industrialization of multiple material pipelines.
Dr. Lu Ziheng, the founder of Kaiwuji, said: "AI is transforming modern society at an amazing speed. Kaiwuji hopes to build not just a faster R & D tool, but a set of reusable and scalable material intelligent infrastructure, making the generation of material IP gradually shift from relying on individual experience and low - frequency chance to being predictable and scalable. We look forward to continuously advancing along this path, from model to mass production, to produce truly valuable materials."
Monolith, the leading investor, said: "We have been paying attention to the combination of AI and basic sciences, and this direction requires patience. What makes Kaiwuji different is that they don't just build a good - looking model. Instead, they have figured out from the beginning how to use large - models in the material field, where to use them, and how to implement them. The team has a clear judgment on the technical route and is also very practical. We are very optimistic about this approach of 'looking far and moving steadily'."
Cai Wei, a partner at Photon Venture Capital, said: "The Kaiwuji team starts from the first - principles of material discovery (based on the density functional theory DFT) and delves into the underlying technologies of AI for Science. The core team has a cross - disciplinary background in AI algorithms, materials science, and high - performance computing. Relying on self - developed material prediction and generation models, they are expected to subversively discover and obtain truly synthesizable materials from scratch according to the property characteristics required in the real environment, truly achieving a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of AI for Science in materials."
Zhao Boshi, an investor at JAFCO Asia, said: "The JAFCO team has long tracked the evolution and breakthroughs of AI4S in the field of materials science and believes that the technological inflection point may be approaching. Dr. Lu's team at Kaiwuji has mature experience in building the state - of - the - art model in AI materials science and has reserved an innovative technical route to support the scaling up of materials science models. JAFCO believes that Kaiwuji is a rare team capable of bringing a breakthrough Aha Moment to the field of AI materials science."
Lou Yang, a partner at Light Source Capital, said: "As the long - term exclusive financial advisor and early investor, Light Source Capital is honored to witness Kaiwuji's completion of a new round of financing. Kaiwuji starts with the end in mind and is committed to opening up the end - to - end path from model to industry, building a new - generation material R & D paradigm, directly targeting the core links of material value creation and industrialization, and is expected to significantly improve the R & D efficiency of new materials and reshape the industrial innovation model. We firmly believe that Kaiwuji is expected to grow into a full - stack company in the field of AI4Materials with self - developed AI models, self - developed material pipelines, and an automated experimental system."
Hou Luwen, the vice - president of Light Source Capital, said: "We are honored to accompany Kaiwuji through a new round of financing. We have long been optimistic about the company's development in the field of AI4Materials. Kaiwuji is brave enough to explore the full - process closed - loop and the deep waters of industrialization. Most importantly, the team can unite talents with different backgrounds into a cohesive force, showing their skills in various fields such as model, experiment, and mass production while closely collaborating. This team cohesion is more difficult to replicate than the technical route. We look forward to Kaiwuji finding 'the next new material that defines human civilization' in the process of promoting material innovation and industrialization."