The brief

Analyst view

• Orbital's Orb simulator and autoresearch agents design materials in months, not years.
• Discovered PFAS-free GPU cooling fluid in months (vs 10 years, $100M traditionally).
• Series B ($50M, May 2026) funds data-centre scale-up and CurieOS licensing to BASF.

Technical approach

As reported

World models

Multi-scale molecular simulation

Orb models quantum and fluid dynamics, simulating up to 100,000 atoms on a single GPU.

Autoresearch agents

Sample-efficient experimentation

Machine learning agents design experiments and choose which candidates to test next, reducing the number of costly physical trials needed to find breakthroughs.

Fast iteration

Weeks instead of years

Combining simulation with targeted physical experiments compresses development cycles from 5-10 years to months, enabling rapid exploration of molecular space.

Licensing platform

CurieOS materials discovery

The platform is licensed to partners like BASF to accelerate their own materials research in fields such as automotive catalysts and industrial chemicals.

Show all 4