Finnish company Kemira, a global leader in sustainable chemical solutions for water-intensive industries, and CuspAI, the UK-based frontier AI materials science company, have used generative AI to design new materials targeting the removal of PFAS, so-called \u2018forever chemicals\u2019, from drinking and process water at trace concentrations – using chemistry that is stable, sustainable and manufacturable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The materials discovery project explored a design space of approximately 300 trillion possible material structures and delivered more than 5000 novel material designs with full property data for three priority PFAS molecules: GenX, PFBS and PFOS. This was narrowed to approximately 20 selected priority candidates now advancing to further development. The program reached this stage in six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the first commercial partnership to apply generative AI end-to-end to the design of new materials for PFAS remediation. While academic groups and technology companies have explored AI for materials screening, no previous collaboration has taken a generative approach, designing entirely new structures from scratch against industrial performance criteria and delivering candidates at this scale and speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKemira challenged us with finding new solutions to one of the most pressing environmental problems of our time, and in six months our partnership delivered,\u201d said Dr Chad Edwards, CEO and Co-Founder, CuspAI. \u201cThe collaboration is now advancing to its next phase, with further projects already being scoped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis project combined Kemira’s deep expertise in water treatment chemistry with CuspAI’s capabilities and the results speak for themselves,\u201d said Sampo Lahtinen, Executive Vice President, Research and Innovation, Kemira. \u201cOur teams worked closely together to ensure that every material candidate was evaluated against real industrial requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are persistent synthetic chemicals found in drinking water worldwide. They are subject to tightening regulation, including US EPA maximum contaminant limits in parts per trillion scale, announced in 2024, and the EU Drinking Water Directive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today’s leading remediation technology is granular activated carbon (GAC). Kemira initiated this collaboration to explore whether AI-driven design could open a path to more selective and longer-lasting alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kemira defined the brief: a discovery phase project of new materials that can remove specific PFAS molecules from water at sub-parts-per-billion concentrations, using chemistry that is water-stable, environmentally compatible, synthesizable and cost-effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CuspAI’s platform designed entirely new metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) from scratch, searching approximately 300 trillion possible structures and delivering more than 5000 novel potential material designs with property data across all three target molecules, narrowed to selected priority candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project is now moving into its next phase of further development and testing, while further programs across additional material classes are being scoped under the partnership’s framework agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis partnership has shown us what AI-driven materials design looks like when it meets real industrial requirements,\u201d said Antti Salminen, President and CEO, Kemira. \u201cWe now have a credible path toward a next-generation PFAS remediation product, and we look forward to further collaboration with the CuspAI team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The companies said additional projects are already being scoped as the partnership moves into broader development phases globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finnish company Kemira, a global leader in sustainable chemical solutions for water-intensive industries, and CuspAI, the UK-based frontier AI materials science company, have used generative AI to design new materials targeting the removal of PFAS, so-called \u2018forever chemicals\u2019, from drinking and process water at trace concentrations – using chemistry that is stable, sustainable and manufacturable. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":169252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21064,93],"tags":[25681,25693,76,25682,25683,25688,25684,18593,15358,25691,25689,25692,25686,25685,25687,25690],"class_list":["post-169251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-top-stories","tag-ai-materials-science","tag-cuspai","tag-digital-transformation","tag-drinking-water","tag-environmental-technology","tag-eu-technology","tag-forever-chemicals","tag-generative-ai","tag-industrial-ai","tag-kemira","tag-mofs","tag-pfas","tag-pfas-remediation","tag-sustainable-chemistry","tag-water-purification","tag-water-treatment"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169253,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169251\/revisions\/169253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}