Matter Machine, a University of Liverpool spinout using AI to discover new materials, has closed an oversubscribed £4m pre-Series A led by IP Group, with Northern Gritstone and four other investors joining the cap table.
The company was set up by Professor Matt Rosseinsky, who has led inorganic chemistry at Liverpool since 1999. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a winner of its Royal Medal for physical sciences. Matter Machine is based at the university's £81m Materials Innovation Factory, which was funded by Unilever.
The business is not starting from a blank sheet. In 2021, Rosseinsky's group used an AI tool to identify four new materials, including lithium-conducting solid-state compounds.
The round
London-listed IP Group led the round. It was joined by Northern Gritstone, the University of Liverpool Enterprise Fund, Norrsken Evolve and LYVA Labs.
IP Group also has a second line into the deal through the Northern Universities Venture Fund. That fund is managed by Parkwalk, IP Group's fund management arm, and it also took part.
The valuation was not disclosed, and neither was the university's retained equity.
The money will be used to grow the team, develop the platform and build commercial partnerships across several sectors.
The Sanghera hire
The round comes with a notable appointment. Gordon Sanghera, who ran Oxford Nanopore for more than 20 years and took it from an Oxford spinout to a London Stock Exchange listing, joined Matter Machine on 12 October to lead its commercialisation strategy.
Sanghera stepped down as Oxford Nanopore's chief executive in March and will remain an adviser there until early 2027. Bringing in an executive with his record is a clear signal to later-stage investors that the company intends to build a commercial business, not just a research programme.
The product
Matter Machine's platform targets inorganic crystalline materials for batteries and catalysts. It pairs AI-based prediction with laboratory experiments and materials characterisation, which allows candidate materials to be tested rather than only modelled.
The company also works with AIM-HI, a university initiative to make the Liverpool City Region a hub for AI-driven materials research.
Where it sits
AI for materials discovery has drawn some of the largest deep-tech cheques in Europe, led by Cambridge-based CuspAI. At £4m, Matter Machine is at a much earlier stage, but its syndicate is heavily weighted towards northern and university-linked capital.
Northern Gritstone and the Northern Universities Venture Fund both exist to keep spinouts from the North's research universities funded close to home. If Matter Machine raises a full Series A, the investors already on the cap table are well placed to support it.
Original source: Tech Funding News — https://techfundingnews.com/matter-machine-raises-4m-ip-group-ai-materials-oxford-nanopore-sanghera/
