- Last modified: October 20, 2023
Insider Brief
- Cosmos Innovation, an AI-driven company focused on advancing perovskite silicon tandem (PST) solar cell technology, has raised $19.7 million in funding.
- The company introduced Mobius, an AI recipe optimization platform aimed at transforming the semiconductor and solar sectors. It promises to accelerate process development by up to 10x, targeting efficient solar cell production.
- Funding was led by Xora Innovation, with participation from entities like Innovation Endeavors, Two Sigma Ventures, and notable individuals from MIT and DeepMind.
PRESS RELEASE — SINGAPORE, October 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Cosmos Innovation, an AI-first company building next-generation perovskite silicon tandem (PST) solar cell technology, today announced raising $19.7 million in total funding. The funding will support the company’s fundamentally different approach to developing perovskite silicon tandem solar cell technology.
The funding coincides with Cosmos Innovation’s unveiling of Mobius, the industry’s pioneering AI recipe optimization platform. Mobius has been demonstrated across various sectors, including solar, silicon carbide, advanced data center chips and advanced packaging. This platform fuels Cosmos Innovation’s ambitious endeavor: construction of the world’s first self-learning fab in the solar and semiconductor space.
Cosmos Innovation is reinventing the historically manual, trial-and-error-based development process for semiconductors by using AI to optimize and speed up the experimental design, test and iterate loop. The company is on the forefront of using AI to build disruptively better physical, science-based technologies. Cosmos Innovation plans to build the world’s first self-learning fab in this space and expects its approach to yield best-in-class performance for perovskite silicon tandem solar cells.
The Series A round was led by Xora Innovation, an early-stage, deep-tech investment platform of Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore. Other investors joining the round include Innovation Endeavors, which led the seed round; Two Sigma Ventures; DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis; noted MIT professor Tomaso Poggio, a founder of computational neuroscience; Richard Socher, leading natural language processing (NLP) researcher, CEO of You.com and managing partner at AIX Ventures; and Western Technology Investments, one of the leading venture debt funds in Silicon Valley.
The Next Generation of Solar Brought to Market with AI
Perovskite silicon tandem has gained solar industry attention because it has the potential to surpass the performance of pure silicon, the industry standard today. However, there are fundamental challenges to overcome to bring this novel design to market. Namely, the multilayer architecture leads to innumerable variations of possible design, making it time consuming and expensive to achieve the optimal “recipe” for peak cell efficiency and stability. Cosmos Innovation is applying Mobius to unlock the full potential of perovskite silicon tandem technology. With the use of advanced AI, Cosmos Innovation aims to develop the world’s most cost-effective, high-efficiency solar cells.
Cosmos Innovation is already seeing remarkable results from the Mobius platform. The company has demonstrated a 10x acceleration in process recipe development time and step-function improvements in target performance metrics with leading semiconductor companies. Mobius can discover a combination of materials, processes and architectures that yields the most efficient solar cells in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods.
“Mainstream silicon solar technology is reaching its technological limits. Our innovative AI process optimization platform enables us to accelerate the once-in-a-lifetime platform shift to perovskite silicon tandem technology in the solar industry,” said Vijay Chandrasekhar, CEO and co-founder, Cosmos Innovation. “Our use of AI-driven experimental design will enable Cosmos Innovation to arrive at the optimal solution with far fewer experiments. This approach will enable us to build highly efficient, cost-effective solar cells in a much shorter time, which is key to meeting the ambitious net zero targets being set around the world.”
Experts at the Intersection of AI, Semiconductors and Solar
Founded in 2022, Cosmos Innovation is bringing together leading experts in AI, semiconductors and solar to give the company a distinct market advantage. Founders Vijay Chandrasekhar and Joel Li, the company’s CTO, have academic and professional careers at the intersection of these three fields, each with deep expertise leading specialized engineering teams at major research institutes.
Prior to Cosmos Innovation, Chandrasekhar led the AI effort at the Institute for Infocomm Research at the Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), where he managed a portfolio of more than 50 AI projects across over 10 domains with a key focus on semiconductors. Li was the former group head at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, where he led the development of an award-winning PV manufacturing technology. He also served as an AI team lead at A*STAR, where he led the development and deployment of AI solutions for Tier-1 manufacturers and R&D institutes in the semiconductor, material and chemical domains.
Supporting Quotes
Joel Li, CTO and Co-Founder, Cosmos Innovation
“Cosmos Innovation has proven AI technology to tackle the combinatorial explosion problem that semiconductor and solar cell process optimization faces. Our proprietary AI system, Mobius, has shown it can accelerate process optimization by up to 10x. It does this by intelligently proposing the next set of materials and process conditions to run. We believe that Mobius will help us solve the last-mile challenges of perovskite silicon tandem solar cells and accelerate its commercialization.”
Phil Inagaki, Managing Director, Xora Innovation
“Cosmos Innovation has assembled some of the world’s leading minds in AI, semiconductor manufacturing and solar to create Mobius — the first AI platform that enables self-learning fabrication of complex semiconductor devices. The application of Mobius to perovskite silicon tandem solar cells promises to deliver more cost-effective, reliable and efficient modules on an accelerated timeline. Cosmos Innovation exemplifies the technical and market expertise emerging from the Singapore R&D ecosystem and Xora is excited to support this home-grown, deep-tech company that’s poised to transform the global market for sustainable solar energy.”
Dror Berman, Founding Partner, Innovation Endeavors
“AI is transforming the way science gets done. Cosmos Innovation is at the forefront of AI innovation for the solar and semiconductor industries, driving a radically different approach for process recipe development. Cosmos Innovation is at the confluence of the company’s proven AI capabilities and the massive trillion-dollar opportunity emerging from silicon solar technology reaching its fundamental limits.”
Colin Beirne, Partner, Two Sigma Ventures
“The beauty of AI is its ability to positively surprise us — to reach for solutions that elude our human brains because of our biology and conditioning. AI thrives in situations of complexity and large parameter spaces — like semiconductor development. Cosmos Innovation is harnessing these capabilities, and building a tremendous team of experts, with a goal of reaching new heights in perovskite silicon tandem solar cell efficiency. We’re incredibly excited to support them on this valuable mission.”
Resources
- MIT Technology Review: Eric Schmidt — This is how AI will transform the way science gets done
- New York Times: Demis Hassabis — A.I. Could Solve Some of Humanity’s Hardest Problems. It Already Has
About Cosmos Innovation
Cosmos Innovation is revolutionizing the approach to solar and semiconductor process development. Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in its Mobius platform, the company is speeding up recipe development of perovskite silicon tandem technology by 10x to yield the most efficient solar cells, in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods. Founded by Vijay Chandrasekhar and Joel Li, Cosmos Innovation is led, advised and supported by some of the top minds at the intersection of AI, solar, semiconductors and deep tech. The company has raised funding from investors that include Xora Innovation, an early-stage, deep-tech investment platform of Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore; Innovation Endeavors; Two Sigma Ventures; DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis; noted MIT professor Tomaso Poggio, a founder of computational neuroscience; Richard Socher, leading natural language processing (NLP) researcher; and Western Technology Investments, one of the leading venture debt funds in Silicon Valley. For more information, visit cosmosinnovation.com.
About Xora Innovation
Xora Innovation is an early-stage deep tech investing platform of Temasek that is headquartered in Singapore. It invests in disruptive, world-changing ventures forged by ambitious founders and powered by compelling scientific breakthroughs. For more information on Xora Innovation, please visit xora.vc.
Featured image: Credit: Cosmos Innovation
