IIT Madras alumnus left corporate roles to build an AI startup; how Akash Ramdas raised $9 million to accelerate semiconductor materials discovery

IIT Madras alumnus Akash Ramdas, who completed his master’s degree and PhD at Stanford University, is using artificial intelligence to accelerate materials discovery for the semiconductor industry. His startup, Discovered Materials, co-founded with IIT Madras batchmate Adwait Sridhar, has raised $9 million in seed funding. Ramdas’s research included computational screening of more than 15,000 metals to identify potential alternatives to copper, addressing challenges in chip performance, heat management and next-generation electronics.