AI engineering at the quantum scale.
A fully solvated COVID spike protein with half a million atoms simulated at quantum accuracy on a single GPU.
This scale is only possible with Orbital's research.
We live in a material world. The chips powering the computer you're reading this on are advanced materials called semiconductors, crafted from the silicon that gave Silicon Valley its name. The battery in your electric car, the composites in spaceships, and the LEDs in your screen are also advanced materials. New advanced materials powered 20th-century prosperity – and will super charge the 21st
But discovering and scaling up new materials is hard. Not only do their remarkable properties derive from complex quantum interactions that are too difficult for traditional, bottom-up computer simulations to solve accurately, but translating a promising material from the lab to industrial-scale production presents significant hurdles. Designing efficient hardware, optimizing process parameters, and ensuring consistent quality at scale are all complex challenges. This means that materials science has not benefited from the exponential improvements that computers have brought to other fields.
AI has changed this. Instead of painstaking trial-and-error in the lab and on the factory floor, engineers design materials and manufacturing processes with the same fluidity with which they currently design a building or an airfoil in CAD software. AI-powered platforms, combined with robotics, can revolutionize materials development and engineering from start to finish. They enable virtual prototyping and testing, optimize hardware design, and streamline production. AI accelerates not just discovery, but the entire journey from lab to market.
This is the future Orbital is building with our research.