Berlin-based Dunia Innovations, a deep tech startup specialised in AI-driven materials discovery, announced on Wednesday that it has secured $11.5M (approximately €10.6M) in a funding round co-led by Elaia and redalpine.
Other backers including, the EIC, Pace Ventures, Kindred Capital, Deep Science Ventures, and Anglo American, also participated in the round.
Bridging the gap between AI insights and real-world applications
Founded by Alexander Hammer, Marcus Tze-Kiat Ng, and Ahmed Ismail, Dunia uses advanced technology (AI x Robotics) to speed up the discovery of new materials.
Describing the inspiration behind establishing Dunia Innovations to Silicon Canals, Alexander Hammer CEO and co-founder says, “The inspiration behind Dunia Innovations came from recognising a critical gap between the potential of AI in scientific discovery and its real-world application.”
“While AI has revolutionised fields like drug discovery, the bottleneck in translating AI-generated insights into tangible materials was a major challenge. I saw an opportunity to bridge this gap by leveraging advanced robotics and automation to bring AI-designed materials to life,” he continues.
Alexander Hammer also states that he was inspired by Dr. Marcus Tze-Kiat Ng, one of the co-founders, who has been passionate about solving the climate challenge since he was a teenager.
“He once counted how many trees we’d need to plant to fix the planet, only to realise that planting trees alone wouldn’t be enough. From that moment on, he became obsessed with the idea of artificial photosynthesis, a way to replicate nature’s process of turning CO2 into energy,” Hammer shares.
The company’s third co-founder Dr. Ahmed Ismail has a professional background in the oil & gas industry and is committed to securing a sustainable future for the next generation.
“Together, we founded Dunia to develop breakthrough technologies for a cleaner, more sustainable future,” he says.
Dunia Innovation simplified
Dunia Innovations uses AI and Robotics to speed up the development of climate-critical technologies and aims to decarbonise the chemical industry.
Simplifying the company’s approach, Hammer explains “Imagine baking a cake, but instead of manually following a recipe, a machine does all the work—mixing ingredients, adjusting the oven, and testing the final product until it’s perfect. Dunia does something similar, but instead of cakes, we create new materials. Our platform uses AI and robotics to automatically combine, test, and refine materials needed for clean energy solutions, like those used in carbon capture or renewable energy storage.”
“The key difference is that our physics-informed AI starts with a foundation of scientific knowledge, like knowing how certain ingredients will behave under different conditions. It designs the initial recipe, runs the experiment, and then iteratively updates the process based on the results—improving the outcome each time. What would normally take years of trial and error in a traditional lab, we can achieve in a fraction of the time, and at a much lower cost,” he says.
Shifting the paradigm of electroactive material discovery
The main challenge lies in bridging the gap between AI-designed materials and their practical application, according to Hammer.
“Garbage in, garbage out is a well-known problem in AI. If the data used to train AI models is inaccurate or incomplete, the outputs won’t be reliable. This is especially true in materials science, where the gap between digital models and physical outcomes is significant due to the synthesis bottleneck”.
The solution to this problem is the company’s proprietary self-driving labs, which automate the synthesis and testing process.
This allows researchers to discover and validate new materials at a pace that was previously impossible, claims Hammer.
By integrating accurate, high-quality real-world lab data back into AI models, researchers can make sure that the materials discovered are not only promising in theory but also scalable in practice.
Focus on electrocatalysts
Dunia’s platform focuses on electrocatalysts for generating green hydrogen, ammonia, and converting CO2 into advanced chemical products.
As a result, the company addresses the critical bottleneck in the global transition to low-carbon fuels and chemicals.
“Many AI-focused competitors stop at generating promising designs, but we go further by combining AI with robotics to automate the production and testing of those materials. Additionally, we focus on electroactive materials, which are critical for energy applications, giving us a unique specialisation in the clean energy space,” answers Hammer when asked about Dunia’s USP.
Uses cases
According to Hammer, the energy sector which focuses on decarbonisation and the energy transition, benefits the most from the company’s technology.
“Our breakthroughs in electrocatalysis, carbon capture, and renewable energy storage materials will have a direct impact on sectors like clean energy, hydrogen production, and carbon utilisation technologies,” adds Hammer.
Moreover, industries reliant on advanced materials, such as electronics and battery manufacturing, can leverage the company’s technology to develop more efficient and sustainable products.
Scaling AI and robotics technology in the chemical industry
According to Hammer, the key to scaling AI and robotics in the chemical industry lies in the people.
“Our early hires are among the best in their respective fields, and our leadership team has deep experience in scaling industrial projects, having successfully led energy projects worth hundreds of millions. We combine this with industrial expertise and strategic partnerships, ensuring that our AI-driven innovations don’t just stay in the lab, but can be scaled up to meet real-world demands,” he adds.
The founding team consists of scientists and engineers with deep expertise in chemistry, machine learning, and robotics, and the company is backed by angels including Dr Udo Jung (founder and long-term leader of both the chemicals and petrochemicals divisions at BCG), Dr Chris Gibson (CEO and co-founder of Recursion), Prof. Lee Cronin (Regius Chair of Chemistry and CEO of Chemify), and Dr Carlos Haertel (Former Executive at GE and ex-CTO of Climeworks) who will serve as Chairman of the company board.
Over the past two years, the company has validated its technology in a proof-of-concept on accelerated electrocatalyst ink formulation where the platform outperformed human researchers in both speed and performance.
The investor
Elaia Partners is a European top-tier Venture Capital firm that invests in technology disruptors with global ambition from early stage to growth development.
Céline Passedouet, Investment Director at Elaia says “We were first drawn to the Dunia adventure by the vision and ambition of the founders and were convinced by their ability to execute quickly while retaining a strategic perspective. New materials discovery requires deep scientific backgrounds for which the Dunia team is well-positioned with many years of experience and published research.”
redalpine is the pan-European venture capital firm that empowers Game Changers.
The VC firm brings together financial investment, operational expertise, and a vast international network to help ambitious entrepreneurs transform their vision into a reality.
Michael Sidler, Founding Partner at redalpine, says, “With humanity’s fast-growing need for power and the reliance on petrochemicals, the discovery of novel ways to create sustainable fuels and chemicals has become crucial. We need radical disruption to the existing R&D processes to create novel catalyzing agents for the efficient synthesis of such fuels. Dunia’s AI-driven lab approach is the foundation of the discovery of these world-changing catalysts.”
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