Deep Principle Secures Seed+ Funding Round Led by GL Ventures to Advance Generative AI in Materials Science

Recently, Deep Principle, a tech innovator leveraging artificial intelligence to drive materials research and development (hereinafter referred to as “Deep Principle”), announced the completion of its Seed+ round of financing, exclusively invested by GL Ventures.The proceeds from this funding round will be used to deepen the company’s technological R&D, expand its team, and accelerate collaborations with global chemical materials enterprises, thereby promoting the practical application of generative AI in chemistry and materials science.

Deep Principle, established in 2024, is a global leader in AI+Chemistry technology innovation. By leveraging breakthroughs and applications in AI technology, Deep Principle aims to spearhead innovation in chemical materials, drive technological advancements across the global chemical, materials, energy, and pharmaceutical sectors, and foster more efficient industrial production and a cleaner energy future.

Led by Founder and CEO Jia Haojun and Founder and CTO Duan Chenru, the company comprises a multidisciplinary team of PhDs from top-tier domestic and international institutions such as MIT, Stanford University, Zhejiang University, and Fudan University, along with professionals with backgrounds at global industry leaders including Microsoft, Meta, Dow Chemical, BASF, JD.com, and Tencent. The team possesses extensive experience in both R&D at the intersection of AI and chemistry and the industrial commercialization of related technologies.

New materials are a critical pillar of new-type industrialization, one of the strategic emerging industries vigorously promoted by the state, and a key industrial direction for accelerating the development of new quality productive forces and solidly advancing high-quality development. However, the high costs, low success rates, and lengthy timelines associated with source innovation in new materials have become significant challenges commonly faced by chemical material companies worldwide. Traditional materials R&D, constrained by experience-dominated, experiment-driven trial-and-error approaches, has hit a bottleneck in the exploration of innovative materials. Deep Principle is dedicated to reshaping the materials R&D process through artificial intelligence, optimizing important existing chemical reactions, and discovering key new materials and reactions.

Deep Principle has taken the lead in the industry by overcoming critical frontier technical challenges, such as the efficient AI-based prediction of chemical reaction transition states. Currently, its core algorithm modules consist of four parts:

• ReactControl: Leveraging multiple tools for real-time decision-making to enhance the cost-accuracy trade-off, ReactControl reduces the time required for evaluating catalyst performance by more than half;

• ReactBO: Accelerates the discovery of catalysts and optimization of reaction conditions via Bayesian algorithm optimization, achieving a 1000-fold speedup in identifying synthesizable chromophores within a material space of 32.5 million compounds;

• Reactify: Leverages a recommendation engine for method selection and improvement decisions, reducing errors sixfold and enabling high-throughput DFT to achieve experimental accuracy for the first time;

• ReactGen: Generative AI-Assisted Rapid Sampling of Novel Catalytic Materials and Reactions via Inverse Design, Eliminating the Need to Screen 10^60 Materials.

Leveraging these technologies, Deep Principle has established a closed-loop R&D process for novel chemical materials, spanning from discovery to performance optimization, thereby making material development faster, better, and more cost-effective. Strategic investments and comprehensive collaboration with industry leaders such as XtalPi and DP Technology will further accelerate the company’s progress in empowering the new materials industry.

Dr. Jia Haojun, Founder & CEO of Deep Principlestated: “We sincerely appreciate the continued trust and support from both new and existing shareholders. This round of financing not only serves as a high recognition of Deep Principl’s past achievements, but also enables us to leverage Hillhouse’s robust resource network and extensive industry experience to accelerate our progress in product iteration, technological commercialization, and international market expansion. Deep Principl will focus on achieving key breakthroughs, using them as catalysts to drive innovation and optimization across the chemical materials sector. We aim to empower the global materials, chemical, energy, and pharmaceutical industries, spearhead a new wave of productivity innovation, and deliver more efficient and sustainable solutions to the global market.”

Project Lead, GL Venturesstated: “We are delighted to participate in the investment in ‘Deep Principle.’ The company’s team is young, dynamic, and driven, possessing original innovative capabilities and the ability to solve practical industry challenges. By leveraging highly sophisticated algorithms to optimize the most valuable yet challenging aspects of chemical reactions, the company is poised to achieve breakthrough innovations across the entire industry. We are confident in ‘Deep Principle’s’ capacity to drive the next transformation in the field of chemical materials and look forward to the company injecting fresh vitality and momentum into the innovative development of the global materials and chemical industry.”

GL Ventures is one of China’s most active venture capital platforms, dedicated to identifying and creating value for innovative companies, with a particular focus on key sectors such as new technologies, new energy, new materials, advanced manufacturing, and consumer technology. It is committed to supporting the long-term development of innovative enterprises through its systematic DVC (Deep Value Creation) services.