Reimagining Matter
22 October 2024
The substrate of abundance
Matter is the oldest technology. For 13.8 billion years, atoms have been assembling into structures of increasing complexity from minerals to membranes to machines to minds.
Implications
The cosmos was the first materials scientist and it never stopped iterating. Intelligence is enabling that process to become conscious of itself.
For most of human history, we worked with what we found — shaping stone, smelting metal, pulling silicon from sand. The new age of matter inverts this.
As the cost of discovery collapses and the speed of design accelerates we now design matter from the atom up. The gap between scientific insight and real-world application, once measured in decades, collapses towards zero.
A stalled materials era
No major structural materials have been introduced to the mass market since 1970
0
Elements —> Isotopes
There are 118 confirmed elements in the periodic table, of which 94 occur naturally
94
Isotopes, the second axis of matter
251 stable isotopes are known today. We’re unlocking the capability to discover and separate the full universe of atomically precise materials
> 4000
The headroom in matter
Our most advanced computational structures of matter are still 10⁶× away from the Landauer Limit
10⁶
Companies
We partner with the teams who ask what could exist, unconstrained by what has come before.
“We are architects of nature, designing new blueprints for growth. With an ever-deepening appreciation for all that plants can do, we make the improbable accessible and the surreal rational, shaping a path to abundance for people and the planet.”
Ashley Beckwith
Founder & CEO, Foray Bioscience
Applications
What gets made will be less interesting than what becomes makeable.
Using AI to engineer biology as a giant design space. Machine learning mines billions of years of evolution for clever solutions and to learn the rules of what’s possible, and synthetic biology builds new molecules, medicines, and machines using life’s own toolkit.
New ways of making physical products that are faster, cheaper, and more precise. From 3D printing to laser welding, advanced fabrication changes how things are built.
Instead of relying on chemistry to organise itself, molecular control systems precisely direct how molecules behave. This could transform medicine, manufacturing, and materials science.
Building every step of the manufacturing process under one roof, from raw materials to finished products. This can improve quality, reduce costs, and speed up innovation loops.
Building products one atom at a time. This could unlock entirely new materials and technologies that aren’t possible with today’s manufacturing - a new level of precision and performance.
Materials that can grow, repair themselves, or respond to their surroundings. Making everything from buildings to robots stronger, smarter, and longer lasting.
Reimagining how goods move around the world. From autonomous airships to new shipping networks, better logistics could make global trade faster, cheaper, and more resilient.
Materials engineered to have properties that don’t exist in nature. They can bend light, sound, or heat in remarkable ways, unlocking entirely new technologies.
Signals
