The Pulse
Albert Raises $55 Million for Chemistry-Native AI
Albert announced a $55 million Series B led by TCV to expand its AI platform for chemistry and materials research. The Oakland company says its Valence model outperformed general-purpose AI on a chemistry retrieval benchmark, while the rele
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
TCV leads Albert’s $55 million round
Albert announced a $55 million Series B on October 13, 2026, to expand its AI platform for chemistry and materials research. TCV led the round. New investors Delta-v Capital, Socium Ventures, HighSage Ventures, Coral Capital and Legion VC joined existing backers Coatue, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Index Ventures and Applied Ventures.
The Oakland company says it will use the money to expand its chemistry-specific AI capabilities, with the aim of shortening product development cycles. Albert sells software to research and development teams that work on materials and chemical formulations, rather than a general-purpose chatbot. Its platform brings experiment records and analysis tools into one system, where scientists can search prior work and plan further experiments.
Albert ties Valence to a new chemistry benchmark
The funding announcement also puts a performance claim at the center of Albert’s pitch. The company says its Valence model is 45 times more accurate than general-purpose AI at retrieving correct answers to scientific queries, and says the model was trained to distinguish chemical composition and function in text. The release does not name the comparison models or provide the test design, sample size or evaluation results behind the multiplier.
Albert says it created FormBench, a benchmark for formulation chemistry, to evaluate AI in that setting. The company argues that systems must distinguish between formulations, materials, processes and experimental conditions that may sound alike but produce different results. The release describes FormBench as a new standard, but does not include benchmark results or enough methodological detail to assess that characterization independently.
Talken says lab data is the foundation
“Enterprise AI for chemistry has to be built from the ontology up; the language, data, workflows, and decisions for R&D are deeply specialized,” said Nick Talken, Albert’s CEO and co-founder. He said the funding supports the company’s aim of helping customers build a model of their science based on their experimental data.
Albert’s announcement lists AkzoNobel, Avient, BASF, Chemours, Clorox, Henkel, Kenvue and Nouryon among its partners. Kenvue’s Head of R&D Digital Capabilities, David Lutness, said the partnership had helped connect R&D through a common data platform. Forbes reported that 2,000 AkzoNobel scientists use Albert’s software and that the company has customers including Henkel and Clorox.
Adoption figures come from the company
Albert says project creation on its platform grew 26-fold year over year, its scientist user base grew sixfold, and users now span 44 countries. It also reports a fourfold rise in workflow creation. Those figures come from the company’s announcement, which does not give underlying totals or define the measurement periods beyond the year-over-year comparison.
Forbes reported that the Series B values Albert at about $340 million, citing a person familiar with the deal; the company’s announcement did not disclose a valuation. The gap between a broad funding claim and a measurable technical result is important here: Albert has raised capital to build specialized tools for industrial chemistry, while its headline 45-fold accuracy comparison still needs publicly described test conditions for readers to judge what it demonstrates.