Numat is a Chicago-based advanced-materials company and the first to commercialize metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) at industrial scale. Its molecularly engineered, programmable 'sponges' capture, store, and separate hazardous chemicals for semiconductor, defense, and energy customers, reducing the impact of chemical products and processes on human health and the environment.
Albert Invent builds an AI-native operating system for chemists and materials scientists, unifying electronic lab notebooks, LIMS, regulatory compliance and predictive AI into one cloud platform that aims to compress decades-long R&D cycles into weeks.
Nick Talken is the Co-Founder and CEO of Albert Invent, an Oakland-based AI platform that is transforming how chemists and materials scientists do research and development. A chemical engineer by training who learned to code, Talken spent years inside Henkel's global R&D organization before spinning out Albert Invent in 2022 with a team of co-founders who built the product from within. The company's platform - used by over 3,000 scientists across 142+ labs in 30+ countries at companies like Kenvue, Henkel, and Chemours - has raised over $52 million from top-tier investors including Coatue, Index Ventures, TCV, and J.P. Morgan Private Capital.
Chris Emerson, PhD, is the Founder, Chief Scientist, and CEO of LEVEL, California's #1 cannabis tablet brand. A US Navy veteran and Chinese interpreter turned small-molecule chemist, he abandoned a Stanford postdoc in 2012 to spend four months living in a tent on a Mendocino cannabis farm - and emerged with a founding thesis that would reshape how the industry thinks about getting high. Instead of chasing THC percentages, he built LEVEL around effects-driven cannabinoid formulations using precise ratios of acidic, neutral, and degradative compounds the plant alone can't deliver. Two US patents, multiple peer-reviewed publications, and an IRB-approved clinical trial later, LEVEL is the top-selling cannabis tablet brand in California, now operating in seven states.
Stig K. Hansen is a Danish-American biochemist and serial biotech founder who co-founded Kimia Therapeutics in 2023, a Berkeley-based precision chemistry company applying machine learning and automated synthesis to drug discovery. He previously co-founded and led Carmot Therapeutics for 15 years, inventing Chemotype Evolution technology that contributed to LUMAKRAS - the world's first FDA-approved KRAS G12C inhibitor for non-small cell lung cancer. Carmot was acquired by Roche for up to $3.1 billion in January 2024. At Kimia, Hansen is pioneering the ATLAS platform (AcTive Learning with Automated Synthesis and Screening), which integrates high-throughput chemistry, genome editing, and AI to map druggable chemical space at unprecedented scale. The company raised a $55 million Series A in December 2023 led by The Column Group and Dimension.
Yoneda Labs is building the foundation model for chemical manufacturing - think of it as the AI brain that tells chemists exactly which conditions to use to make a reaction work, before they spend months running dead-end experiments. Founded by three Cambridge graduates and backed by Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, the company's software suite (Predict, Optimize, Analyze) compresses reaction optimization timelines from months to days. Their first named partnership with Symeres pushed cross-coupling reaction yields from ~30% to over 90%. The goal: become the universal AI layer for the $5 trillion chemical industry.