The Plano, Texas company teaching artificial intelligence to design the polymers inside the world's foldable and flexible screens.
The plastic layers inside a modern display - the clear films, the adhesives that hold panels together, the hard coatings that resist scratches - mostly descend from chemistry invented decades ago. Ares Materials, Inc. was built on a wager that those materials can be reinvented, and that the fastest way to do it is to let machines propose the recipes.
Founded in 2016 as a spin-out from the University of Texas at Dallas, Ares develops what it calls AI-designed optical polymers. Its work sits at an unglamorous but decisive layer of consumer electronics: the physical materials that decide whether a foldable phone creases, whether a rollable screen fatigues, and whether an AR lens stays clear after a year in a pocket.
The company's answer is a platform it named Pylux. It pairs materials informatics - machine-learning models trained specifically on polymer chemistry - with thiol-click chemistry, a reaction family that lets Ares cure films with ultraviolet light instead of solvents. The model narrows a vast space of candidate formulations; an in-house lab in Plano confirms the few that matter. Prediction and beaker, working in a loop.
The result is a portfolio aimed at the flexible-electronics era: transparent substrates that stay clear while they bend, adhesives that bond without solvents, coatings that harden under UV, and a monolithic cover window built for foldable displays.
Advancing humanity's future with sustainable materials to power the digital evolution.
Ares is a B2B supplier. It sells and co-develops proprietary polymers with display makers and electronics manufacturers, organized around one platform and four material families.
The all-encompassing technology platform uniting AI-driven materials informatics with thiol-click chemistry to design advanced optical polymers.
Transparent polymer substrates combining optical clarity with high surface hardness and flexibility for flexible and rollable displays.
Solvent-free, PFAS-free optical adhesives offering tack-free bonding, mechanical strength and near-zero shrinkage.
Room-temperature or UV-cured hard coatings that deliver high hardness with low shrinkage for display surfaces.
A monolithic cover window material for foldable displays - a primary focus of the Series B scale-up.
A mechanical lift-off technology introduced for flexible OLED production.
Established display-materials suppliers - names like SKC, Sumitomo Chemical, Kolon, Toray and DuPont - largely optimize known polyimide and film chemistries. Ares takes a different route on two fronts at once.
The method. Rather than iterating one formula at a time, Ares runs machine-guided, high-throughput experiments. Its models are trained specifically for polymer science and paired with in-house data generation and molecular simulation, compressing years of trial-and-error into targeted searches.
The chemistry. By building on thiol-click reactions and UV curing, Ares removes solvents and PFAS from the process - and claims up to a 90% CO2 reduction versus incumbent technologies. The pitch is that cleaner and better can point the same direction, so adoption isn't a sustainability concession.
Display panel makers, OLED and flexible-electronics manufacturers, and consumer-electronics OEMs. The end products span foldable phones, AR/VR devices, wearables, automotive displays and rollable or architectural electronics - primarily large B2B accounts across the US and Asia.
Ares sits at the materials layer of the display supply chain - upstream of the panel, decisive to its performance. Its distributed footprint mirrors that market: a polymer lab in Plano, a virtual chemistry lab in Guadalajara, and business development in Seoul and Tokyo, close to the world's display manufacturing.
Flexible electronics demand a material that is clear, hard and bendable at once - a combination traditional chemistry struggled to deliver. Ares targets the crease, the fatigue and the scratch, while cutting the solvents and PFAS that make legacy processes dirtier.
A B2B advanced-materials supplier: develop and manufacture proprietary polymers, then sell or co-develop them with manufacturers through strategic partnerships and joint development - supplemented by government/SBIR-backed research funding.
$12 million to scale a monolithic cover window for foldable displays and commercialize solvent-free, PFAS-free adhesives and films.
David Arreaga and Adrian Avendano begin commercializing flexible-electronics materials research from the University of Texas at Dallas.
The company is formally founded in Plano, Texas after securing venture capital.
Ares introduces a mechanical lift-off technology for flexible OLED production and its substrate work.
Ares adds a machine-learning platform to accelerate polymer development cycles and formulation precision.
Black Diamond Ventures leads a $12M raise to scale +Pylux MCW and commercialize PFAS-free adhesives and films.
David Arreaga, Ph.D. - Co-founder & CEO. With a doctorate in materials science and engineering from UT Dallas, Arreaga focused his research on tunable mechanical properties for bendable, rugged electronics before turning it into a company.
Adrian Avendano, Ph.D. - Co-founder & COO. Co-originated the research addressing a gap in microelectronics: the lack of adjustable mechanical properties without sacrificing optical performance.
The leadership team also includes marketing lead Hyun Joong Kim and specialists across data, process development and computational chemistry - reflecting the company's stated value of empowering overlooked technical talent.
AI-designed optical polymers - films, adhesives, substrates, coatings and cover windows - used in flexible and foldable displays and other consumer electronics.
Pylux is Ares Materials' technology platform that combines materials informatics (AI/ML) with thiol-click chemistry to design and formulate advanced polymers.
It is headquartered in Plano, Texas, with a virtual chemistry lab in Guadalajara, Mexico and business development in Seoul, Korea and Tokyo, Japan.
It was co-founded by David Arreaga (CEO) and Adrian Avendano (COO) as a University of Texas at Dallas spin-out, incorporated in 2016.
The company reports about $16.5M in total funding, including a $12M first tranche of a Series B round led by Black Diamond Ventures in October 2025.
Profile compiled from public sources including Ares Materials' website, OLED-Info, Crunchbase and PitchBook. Figures such as revenue and CO2 reduction are company-stated or estimated and marked approximate where noted.