alqem raises €8 million to map the materials universe and build rare-earth-free magnets

alqem, a Munich deeptech startup founded in 2026, has raised €8 million in a pre-Seed round co-led by UVC Partners and Union Square Ventures. The company was founded by Dr. Hanh Nguyen (CEO), Dr. Tiago Cerqueira (CTO), and Prof. Milan Allan (CSO) — a team combining computational materials science, experimental physics, and engineering. Its central claim: it has assembled the largest systematic database of known compounds in the materials universe, and that the right AI architecture applied to that database can compress materials discovery from decades to years. The immediate commercial target is permanent magnets that do not require rare-earth elements.

Mapping the entire chemical space

The conventional constraint on materials discovery is that the chemical space of possible compounds is effectively infinite, and testing candidate materials experimentally — the traditional method — is slow and expensive. Computational approaches have been applied for years, but most work from a narrow slice of known compounds. alqem's bet is scale and systematism: rather than searching a known slice of the chemical space, the company's database attempts to map it entirely — every compound, every structural variant, every theoretical candidate — and then uses predictive AI to identify viable materials that experimental research has not reached.

Nguyen frames the ambition plainly: "For the first time, we have a map of the materials universe. Not just a few known compounds, but a systematic understanding of the entire chemical space." The pre-Seed capital goes toward scaling that discovery engine and advancing development of rare-earth-free permanent magnets specifically — the application where commercial pull and geopolitical incentive both align most sharply.

Why Union Square Ventures is in Munich

The investor structure is the detail that makes this round legible. UVC Partners is the Munich-based co-lead: a firm with a track record in hard-tech companies that need patient capital and science-to-engineering translation. Union Square Ventures — the New York fund known for backing network-effects businesses from Twitter to Kickstarter to Coinbase — is a more unusual participant in a German materials-science pre-Seed.

The rationale reads through the geopolitical thesis. China controls roughly 70% of global rare-earth mining and more than 85% of processing capacity. Permanent magnets — embedded in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, industrial drives, and defence systems — depend on rare earths almost entirely today. A credible path to rare-earth-free magnets addresses a supply-chain vulnerability that both European and American industrial policy has publicly named as a strategic priority. USV's arrival in a Munich materials-science company suggests that some of American early-stage capital's most influential voices are reading this not as a deeptech niche but as a platform bet with geopolitical tailwind.

Whether alqem's database actually produces commercial-grade magnets within a timeline that justifies the capital remains to be seen. The history of advanced materials startups is littered with discoveries that took two generations longer than the founding thesis projected. The pre-Seed is the beginning of the proof, not the proof itself.