Polaron wins £1M Manchester Prize to develop new materials

Polaron, an artificial intelligence startup that accelerates the development of new advanced materials, has won the £1M inaugural Manchester Prize.

Polaron offers an AI-powered platform designed to accelerate the development and optimisation of advanced materials. The company leverages artificial intelligence to speed up the traditionally slow and costly process of material design by dramatically reducing prototyping time and enhancing material characterization. Their platform enables faster, more accurate 3D data generation and deep insights into material properties, allowing for the identification of high-performing materials and efficient manufacturing processes.

By integrating AI-driven optimisation, Polaron helps reduce the overall cost of development and manufacturing, enabling companies to bring better materials to market more quickly. This service is particularly valuable in sectors such as battery technology and other advanced material industries, where rapid innovation is crucial. Polaron’s AI tools support researchers and engineers by streamlining the design process, ultimately making materials science more accessible and cost-effective.

Polaron was founded by Dr Isaac Squires, Dr Steve Kench and Dr Sam Cooper, spinning out their research at Imperial College London in November 2023. The growing start-up unites AI, engineering, and materials science, paving the way for material innovations in batteries and beyond.

Dr Isaac Squires, CEO of Polaron, said: “We are thrilled to have won the first ever Manchester Prize - it has been an extraordinary team effort. In the last year, we have turned the research we pursued at Imperial College London into a commercial product, using our AI to reduce years of materials development into a matter of days. We are now working with our first customers in the battery manufacturing sector to apply Polaron to improve the performance of EVs by extending range and reducing charge times. While this has been our core market to date, Polaron is material agnostic, and we are already bringing our rapid design capabilities to industrial manufacturing more widely, including alloys, composites and catalysts.”

Feryal Clark, Minister for AI said: “The Manchester Prize shows how we’re putting AI to work for people all over the country – supporting breakthroughs and innovations which will unlock so much positive change in our lives. “Polaron’s work in developing advanced materials will have a range of uses, including in driving forward new efficiencies for the batteries powering electric vehicles – giving drivers more miles on the road – and in delivering homegrown energy like wind turbines – supporting lower cost, clean, secure power for the British people.

“The innovative work we’re supporting will mean that we can fast track untold numbers of new AI breakthroughs which put improvements into the hands of British citizens in mere days rather than years. This is how we’re putting our Plan for Change into action.”