Theia Ventures leads pre-seed round in Novyte Materials to scale AI-led materials discovery
Theia Ventures said the investment aligns with its focus on backing technologies that enable sustainable innovation and decarbonisation by rethinking foundational industrial processes such as materials development.
Bengaluru, December 17: Theia Ventures, an early-stage investment firm focused on artificial intelligence, deeptech, energy transition and decarbonisation, has led a pre-seed funding round in Novyte Materials, an AI-driven materials discovery startup.
The round also saw participation from Sandesh Paturi, co-founder of Venwiz, and Niharika Jain, director at Chemvera. The funds will be used to build Novyte’s AI platform and run early pilot projects aimed at accelerating collaborative and co-creation-led discovery of next-generation materials.
Theia Ventures said the investment aligns with its focus on backing technologies that enable sustainable innovation and decarbonisation by rethinking foundational industrial processes such as materials development.
Materials discovery remains one of the most time-consuming and capital-intensive stages of innovation, often spanning years of trial-and-error experimentation and fragmented workflows between computational modelling and physical validation. Novyte aims to compress this cycle using generative AI and physics-based simulations, reducing R&D timelines by up to ten times and cutting early-stage physical testing costs by as much as 90%.
The company’s platform designs, validates and reverse-engineers novel materials, with applications across composite materials, aerospace, advanced manufacturing and specialty chemicals. By integrating wet-lab experimentation with dry-lab modelling, Novyte seeks to replace traditional trial-and-error approaches with predictable and scalable engineering workflows.
“As AI becomes foundational infrastructure for every industry, Novyte is bringing that transformation to materials discovery,” said Priya Shah, founder and general partner at Theia Ventures. “Their system replaces years of lab work with intelligent AI-led design and real-time validation, accelerating innovation across energy, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.”
Ajaz Khan, founder and chief executive officer of Novyte Materials, said current innovation is constrained by the limitations of existing materials. “By decoding complex chemical interactions with AI, we are turning the search for new materials into a predictable and scalable engineering process,” he said.
Novyte is incubated at ICT-NICE, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, and works closely with the institute’s research ecosystem while building its own dedicated R&D and synthesis lab infrastructure.
In its initial phase, the company plans to partner with specialty chemicals, polymers, paints, adhesives and coatings manufacturers seeking alternative materials with improved performance and sustainability attributes. The focus is on lowering operational and R&D costs, shortening development timelines and making the transition from laboratory research to commercialisation more reliable.
The investment marks Theia Ventures’ fourth deal from its new fund, which announced its first close in October 2025, anchored by British International Investment. The fund’s earlier investments include Sarla Aviation, Climitra Carbon and Lemnisca, and it plans to deploy additional capital over the remainder of the financial year.
