Introducing Altara: the scientific intelligence platform for the physical world. Today Eva Tuecke and I are excited to announce our $7M seed led by Greylock Partners, joined by Neo, BoxGroup, Liquid 2 Ventures, and angel investors including Jeff Dean and leadership from OpenAI & AMD. We’re already working with... early customers in semiconductors, batteries, and advanced materials. More below.show more

1/ The first wave of AI transformed digital work: writing, coding, GTM. But while the digital world accelerated, the physical world was left behind. We’re entering a new era of frontier technology: high-performance semiconductors, next-generation batteries, novel advanced materials, and so much more. However, scientific R&D is fundamentally bottlenecked by fragmented data and complex manual workflows. Critical insights are buried in 50-year-old legacy software that scientists call “the place data goes to die.” Altara captures mission-critical scientific and engineering processes to collapse weeks of work down to minutes. Our agents ingest and reason across the complex, multimodal data of the physical sciences, such as semiconductor wafer maps, high-resolution inspection data like SEM images, large-scale instrument time series data, scattered spreadsheets, unstructured research, and domain-specific legacy systems. Ultimately, Altara helps companies design better experiments, resolve failures faster, and compress the timeline from discovery to commercialization.

2/ I’m grateful to be building Altara (@altaratech) with @evatuecke, who previously did particle physics research @Fermilab + worked at SpaceX and Clay. I grew up in a family of 5 Electrical Engineering PhDs who have all worked in semiconductors. I conducted AI research at @ibmresearch @MIT_CSAIL and spent the last few years at @warpdotdev building AI that transformed how we develop software. Now, we’re bringing that same lens to the physical world. Check out our blog post here:

3/ We’re hiring! Our incredible team (ex-Nvidia, Applied Intuition, Jane Street, chemistry / materials science / physics research) works in-person in SF. 🌉 If you want to tackle challenges in AI for science and help build the future of the physical world, come join us:

4/ We'd like to thank all our supporters who have helped us get to where we are today, including @CorinneMRiley @apartovi @conconconling @nickaturley @grosen @nkatragadda @adina_z_davis @suzannexie @_shreya_s @hunterwalk @zachlloydtweets and many more. Video credits: @brandonjlu

5/ Read more about Altara’s launch in TechCrunch here:

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V Congratulations!

@GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean So excited to keep building together @catherinehyeo 🚀

@Scobleizer @evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Let’s go! Building for science and the physical world is where it’s at 🦾🦾🦾

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats @catherinehyeo and @evatuecke! So excited to be on this journey together

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats @catherinehyeo @evatuecke and @altaratech team!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean The smartest team I know!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congratulations @catherinehyeo & team!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Thank you Markus!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Such a sick video - congrats on the launch!! 🚀

@evatuecke Congrats, Catherine!!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean This is awesome Catherine!!! Huge congrats 🎉

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Woooo!!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean let’s go!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Let’s goooo, so hyped

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats!

@payathepapaya @evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats! Anyone would be lucky to work with you two 💯

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congratulations @catherinehyeo and @evatuecke!! Was a blast building alongside you at Neo last summer - super excited for you!! Best wishes :D

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Let’s go @catherinehyeo long time coming!! Proud of you

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean to the moon!!!! 🚀🚀🚀🚀

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean goated team!! can't wait to see what you guys will accomplish

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Let's go!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats @evatuecke and @catherinehyeo - dream team!

@evatuecke Thank you Anne!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Legendary 🐐

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats!

Thank you Hadi!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Woohoo, congrats!!

Thank you!!!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congratulations

@Erinlens @evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean huge!!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean congrats Catherine, so proud of you!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean This is so cool Catherine - congratulations!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Huge congrats!!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats team!!! 2026 is the year of Altara!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Huge congrats on the launch! Excited to see what y'all do :D

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean Congrats!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean go catherine!

@evatuecke @GreylockVC @neo @BoxGroup @Liquid2V @JeffDean This is really cool! Congrats!!