Insider Brief
- Physical Superintelligence (PSI), founded by Matt Pines, Alex Klokus, and Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, launched with $58 million in seed funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with participation from Dragon Global, Robot Ventures, Solari, and others.
- PSI is developing Emmy, a system of AI-based “virtual physicists” built on a reasoning engine and simulation library, initially aimed at optimizing terrestrial and orbital data centers by modeling interactions among power, cooling, networking, and computing systems.
- CEO Matt Pines said PSI aims to industrialize the discovery of new physics, with the seed funding supporting recruitment of physicists and AI researchers, development of Emmy’s models and verification systems, and research into energy, sensing, and computing applications.
PRESS RELEASE — Matt Pines, Alex Klokus and Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross has launched Physical Superintelligence(PSI), an AI-focused physics research lab developing computational models and tools for designing and optimizing physical systems. PSI also announced $58 million in seed funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with participation from Dragon Global, Robot Ventures, Solari, Susa, SV Angel, Valkyrie and several individual investors.
The company is initially developing a portion of its core platform, Emmy, for terrestrial and orbital data center optimization. Named for physicist Amalie Emmy Noether, Emmy is a system of AI-based “virtual physicists” built on PSI’s reasoning engine and a curated collection of simulations.
“PSI aims to industrialize the discovery of new physics,” said CEO and Co-founder Matt Pines. “Today, that means giving our customers a measurable edge to design and run their data centers more efficiently. Tomorrow, it means going after physics problems that have been untouched for decades. Our job is to make that kind of ambition affordable and scalable again for our customers and to genuinely change what’s possible for humanity.”
“AI has the potential to fundamentally change the pace of scientific discovery, and physics is one of the areas where that impact could be profound,” said Carmichael Roberts at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “PSI is bringing together a world-class team with the ambition and technical depth to turn that potential into real breakthroughs and unlock new possibilities across energy, computing, materials and other foundational technologies as they build a new model for how physics research gets done.”
PSI’s first planned commercial application is the design and operation of terrestrial and orbital AI data centers. The company said Emmy will use physics-based reasoning and simulation to examine interactions among power, cooling, networking and computing systems. PSI plans to apply the platform to infrastructure design before construction and to the optimization of existing facilities.
The seed funding will support PSI’s research and development operations. The company plans to use the funding to:
- Recruit researchers, scientists and engineers across physics and AI
- Develop Emmy’s models, simulation infrastructure and verification systems
- Research applications across energy, sensing, computing infrastructure and potential new computing technologies
PSI’s team includes physicists, AI researchers, experimentalists and engineers. The company is hiring. To learn more or apply, visit https://psi.inc.
