Discovered Materials offers $1 million for solutions to five materials science problems

Discovered Materials announced a prize pool totaling $1 million for solutions to five open problems in materials science. The challenges include explaining superconductivity in cuprates; predicting structures at silicon–silicon dioxide interfaces; linking grain structure to thermal properties; explaining how light changes materials’ behavior; and improving density functional theory, which is used to model atoms and molecules.

Before the announcement, the startup put frontier AI models to work on the problems autonomously for several days, with internet access and other resources, but they made little progress. The company says the challenges will serve as goalposts for measuring AI’s progress in the field. Discovered Materials develops materials for semiconductors and also conducts research projects with chip manufacturers.