Built by Scientists, for Scientists, Albert Invent is Reimagining the $5T Global Chemicals Market

QUICK TAKE

• Albert Invent raises $7.5M seed round to continue developing its state-of-the-art, end-to-end R&D platform for the $5T global chemicals industry
• Albert is currently utilized by thousands of users in 30+ countries at chemicals and material science companies of all sizes, including Henkel, 3D Systems, and Applied Molecules, to dramatically increase the development pace of new materials
• With funding, Albert will continue to scale data science, engineering, customer success, and go-to-market teams in order to meet strong demand for the platform

THE DETAILS

Albert, the platform which enables chemicals and material science companies to invent the future faster, today announces it has raised $7.5M in seed funding led by Index Ventures with participation from Homebrew, F-Prime Capital, and a number of prominent angel investors. 

At $5 trillion, the chemicals industry is one of the largest markets globally. Chemicals touch almost all components of the physical world, impacting many of the world’s 8 billion people every day. Yet despite the immense size of the industry, many companies still run on pen-and-paper or siloed, legacy, on-premises software. This jumble of disconnected systems inhibits innovation and leads to frustrating and inefficient processes. 

Enter Nick Talken and Ken Kisner, two chemists who knew there had to be a better way to digitally transform this industry. They created Albert to reimagine what R&D can be, by connecting processes, data, and insights in a single place to create one end-to-end source of truth which stretches across the entire organization. 

Key features of the Albert R&D platform include:

• Inventory – provides innovators with the data-driven insights and automation tools needed to more effectively find and research raw materials, both from existing inventory stock and a broader pre-loaded library of 50,000+ commercially available chemicals
• Worksheet – allows scientists to stop working in Excel and makes it easy for teams to more effectively design new formulations that result in fewer iterations
• Experiments – help teams to boost productivity with clean structured data captured in tasks and workflows
• Regulatory Automation – makes it possible for organizations to ship products same-day with automated one-click Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and auto-generated labels

The platform is underpinned by Albert Insights, which acts like a co-pilot by offering end users recommendations guided by machine learning and AI at every step of the workflow, from formulation and inventory selection to compliant-ready labels for shipping product. 

Seeing strong demand for its products, the company will use the seed funding to accelerate the build-out of key product and commercial functions including data science, engineering, customer success, and go-to-market. 

Nick Talken, Albert’s CEO and Co-Founder, commented:

“It’s been my experience that the lab is a place where magic can happen when all of the pieces align. We’ve put the right team in place to persistently evolve Albert so that data-driven innovation is a regular occurrence. But beyond that, Albert is something people actually want to use. They’re willing to replace their spreadsheets and notebooks to try something new, and they’re experiencing benefits that they didn’t realize were possible previously. Now, they can get their work out into the world faster than ever before, enabling a hugely positive impact on the ways we live and work.”

Paris Heymann, the Partner who led the investment for Index Ventures, commented:

“Albert exemplifies the type of software company we seek to back. The platform was developed by a team with deep industry expertise, built specifically for customers who are digitally transforming their R&D efforts and developing the lab of the future. We are thrilled to partner on this journey to fundamentally change how physical products are created."

Based in Oakland, Albert’s team consists of industry specialists and technologists with backgrounds from companies like Autodesk, Benchling, Citrine Informatics, Clorox, DuPont, Epic, Henkel, Okta, and more.