alqem raises €8M pre-seed to hunt rare-earth-free magnets with AI
What's the deal? Munich-based alqemDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised €8 million in pre-seed funding co-led by UVC PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Union Square Ventures. The DeepTech startup is building an AI-driven engine to discover and commercialize next-generation materials, starting with rare-earth-free magnets.
Who's behind it? alqem was founded by the team behind AlexandriaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, an open materials database used by thousands of researchers and companies. Co-founder and chief technology officer Dr. Tiago Cerqueira co-built Alexandria, while co-founder Prof. Milan Allan, Chair of Experimental Physics at LMU Munich, anchors the startup's in-house synthesis capability.
What's the endgame? alqem wants to compress the path from scientific prediction to industrial application from decades to months. Its engine rests on three foundations: a proprietary database of predicted stable compounds weighted away from rare-earth and toxic elements, high-quality training datasets for material properties, and in-house synthesis to validate predictions against experiments.
Why now? Advanced permanent magnets — critical to electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, and defense — are roughly 90% produced in China, and recent export restrictions have turned supply into a geopolitical flashpoint. The last breakthrough in permanent magnets came more than 40 years ago.
"We start where the need is greatest — rare-earth-free magnets, a material the world urgently needs and hasn't been able to replace for decades," says chief executive officer Dr. Hanh Nguyen. The engine has already produced a pipeline of rare-earth-free magnet candidates, with predicted performance validated against experimental data.
alqem is also working to establish a European-led materials supply chain, adding research, engineering, and manufacturing jobs across its Munich and Coimbra operations.
The signal: alqem's raise reflects rising investor conviction in AI-driven materials discovery, where data scale is emerging as a key differentiator. The backing of two notable leads — UVC Partners and Union Square Ventures — signals confidence, though the ticket sits well below peers like UK-based CuspAI, which raised more than $100 million in Series A funding. In European climate and clean-energy circles, deep-tech materials platforms are increasingly seen as enabling technologies for decarbonization.
Read more: UVC Partners
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
