YC startup offers $1M for materials science AI challenges

Discovered Materials is offering $1 million for solutions to five unsolved problems in materials science that frontier AI models have failed to crack.

Discovered Materials, a San Francisco startup in Y Combinator's spring 2026 batch, announced a $1M challenge for five open problems in materials science. The problems include explaining cuprate superconductivity, predicting silicon-silicon dioxide interfaces, mapping grain structures to thermal properties, predicting light-induced behavior changes, and improving Density Functional Theory. The startup tested frontier lab models on the problems for days with no progress. An advisory group of academics from leading universities defined the challenges to gauge AI progress in complex physics relevant to semiconductors and energy storage.