Kristina Roberts
Lila Sciences, a young but fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) company, has made headlines by reaching a valuation of more than $1.3 billion after securing new investment from tech giant Nvidia and other major backers. This funding success shows how investors are increasingly drawn to the world of AI-driven science—a space where technology and research are merging to create new possibilities for discovery.
Founded in 2023, Lila Sciences has a bold mission—to build what it calls “scientific superintelligence.” This means creating an advanced AI system that doesn’t just learn from existing data but actively helps design and run experiments to find new scientific knowledge. The company’s approach combines AI models with fully automated laboratories—labs where robots and smart machines perform experiments around the clock without human interruption.
The recent funding round raised $115 million, which is part of an extended Series A round that now totals $350 million. Overall, Lila has raised about $550 million so far—a huge sum for a company that is just two years old. Investors in this round include Nvidia’s venture arm and other well-known names like Flagship Pioneering (the firm that helped create Lila), General Catalyst, and a branch of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
With this funding, Lila plans to speed up the creation of what it calls “AI Science Factories.” These factories are advanced research centers filled with robotic tools and AI systems that can conduct scientific experiments continuously. The company has already leased a massive 235,500-square-foot space in Cambridge, Massachusetts—one of the biggest lab spaces rented in the Greater Boston area this year. This new space will become one of the world’s largest and most advanced centers for AI-powered science.
But Lila’s ambitions don’t stop there. The company also plans to open its AI platform to other businesses, allowing them to use its technology through enterprise software. This means companies in fields such as energy, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals will be able to use Lila’s AI systems and automated labs to accelerate their own discoveries. Although Lila hasn’t yet revealed which firms are interested, it says many large organizations have already expressed strong curiosity about what it offers.
Unlike many other AI companies that rely on massive amounts of internet data to train their models, Lila is taking a very different route. Most large language models, like the ones used in chatbots, are trained on online text—but experts say that source of data is nearly used up. Lila, on the other hand, focuses on creating new, original scientific data through hands-on experiments. This gives the company a huge advantage: its AI doesn’t depend on old information—it generates new knowledge. According to Lila, the future of AI in science will depend not on who has the biggest data centers, but on who owns the largest and most advanced automated laboratories.
Lila’s co-founder and CEO, Geoffrey von Maltzahn, describes the company’s mission with passion and optimism. “What’s so exciting about Lila is that we’re going to use those resources very productively in a way that I feel benefits almost everyone on the planet,” he said in an interview. To him, this new model of scientific research is more than just a technological achievement—it’s a new way of thinking about how science works. “It will set in motion the scientific method in a new form,” von Maltzahn added.
That “new form” involves merging human creativity with machine precision. Lila’s AI doesn’t replace scientists; it helps them work faster and smarter. For example, instead of manually testing thousands of chemical reactions, a scientist could use Lila’s system to run automated experiments, analyze the results instantly, and generate new hypotheses in hours rather than months. This kind of efficiency could change how quickly we discover new medicines, materials, and energy sources.
Lila says that its platform has already led to thousands of discoveries in life sciences, chemistry, and materials research. However, the company doesn’t plan to take these discoveries directly to the market itself. As von Maltzahn explained, “We aren’t going to bring molecules into clinical trials ourselves, or scale up new energy breakthroughs. Those are going to be done by partners of Lila and startups that are on a Lila platform.” In other words, Lila will act as the brain behind many scientific innovations, while other companies handle the production and commercialization.
The rise of Lila Sciences comes at a time when many investors are turning their attention to AI systems designed specifically for scientific discovery. Unlike general-purpose AI models, these specialized systems aim to solve complex scientific problems—like predicting the structure of new materials or designing safer, more effective drugs. In recent months, several startups have entered this space. For example, Periodic Labs, founded by researchers from Google DeepMind and OpenAI, raised $300 million to develop an AI-powered “digital scientist.” This growing interest shows how the next big frontier for AI might not be chatbots or image generators, but machines that help us understand and improve the real world.
Lila’s success story also reflects a bigger shift in how we view the relationship between technology and science. For centuries, scientific progress depended mostly on human curiosity, observation, and experimentation. Now, with AI stepping into the lab, discoveries that once took years could happen in days. AI systems can handle massive amounts of data, recognize patterns humans might miss, and even propose entirely new ideas for experiments. When combined with automated labs, these abilities could lead to a golden age of scientific breakthroughs.
For Lila Sciences, this vision is not just a dream—it’s becoming a reality. The company’s “AI Science Factories” are expected to redefine how scientists work, giving them tools that are faster, smarter, and capable of generating insights on a scale never seen before.
As Geoffrey von Maltzahn put it, the goal is to use AI “in a way that benefits almost everyone on the planet.” And if Lila succeeds, its impact could indeed be global—helping create new medicines, better materials, cleaner energy, and a deeper understanding of how the universe works.
In a world where AI is often associated with chatbots, automation, and digital art, Lila Sciences is showing that artificial intelligence can do something far more meaningful—it can help humanity make real, tangible progress in science. And with Nvidia and other powerful investors backing this mission, Lila’s journey is only just beginning.
