Scimplify raises $25M to apply AI agents to specialty chemicals and critical materials

The round

Indian startup Scimplify has raised $25 million in an all-equity strategic round to expand its AI-powered approach to producing specialty chemicals and critical materials, TechCrunch reports. Hitachi Ventures led the round, with two of the company's customers, Henkel and Teknor Apex, joining as new investors alongside existing backers Accel India, Bertelsmann India Investments, Omnivore and 3one4 Capital.

The round values the Bengaluru-based company at roughly $250 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction cited by TechCrunch, up from $150 million after a $40 million Series B in March 2025. Scimplify said the new money brings its total equity funding to $80 million, though it declined to disclose its valuation.

An AI layer over a factory network

Founded in 2023, Scimplify takes a customer's material requirements, develops the chemical manufacturing process at its research facilities in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and then transfers that process to partner factories for commercial production. Its in-house team of scientists and engineers oversees work across a network of more than 500 manufacturing facilities.

Coordinating all of this is Scinode, the company's proprietary AI platform. According to co-founder Sachin Santhosh, who spoke to TechCrunch, the platform runs specialized AI agents for different functions, including research, manufacturing and quality control, while identifying suitable production routes and facilities and tracking quality and regulatory requirements.

"Each of these agents is basically solving for what [a customer] would want, working backward from the customer's requirement," Santhosh said, adding that this helps the company move faster and retain customer context for future work.

The compression is significant: in some cases, Scimplify has gone from receiving a customer's requirements to delivering the finished material in just two months, Santhosh said, compared with the 12 to 18 months such work would typically take.

Growing outside India

About 90% of Scimplify's manufacturing currently takes place in India, but the company plans to expand its production network to the U.S. and Japan over the next year. The U.S. has become a key growth market: its annualized revenue run rate there has risen sixfold to about $60 million, from $10 million a year ago, and now accounts for roughly 30% of the business. Customers outside India collectively contribute more than half of revenue, up from less than 5% about 18 months ago.

Overall, the company, which serves more than 1,000 customers and has delivered products to more than 40 countries, reports an annualized revenue run rate of about $200 million, triple the figure from a year earlier. Santhosh told TechCrunch that Scimplify is targeting a $400 million run rate over the next year, has been EBITDA-positive for the past two months and expects to turn profitable after tax this month. Named customers include TDK, BASF and Hitachi.

Energy, electronics and defense now generate 45% to 50% of revenue, up from less than 15% a year ago, a shift Santhosh attributed to AI-fueled demand for electronics and energy infrastructure materials, along with defense demand driven by ongoing wars. The company is also working on tungsten derivatives produced from scrap and on rare earth materials, two categories where global supply is heavily concentrated in China.

Where the money goes

Scimplify plans to deploy about $7.5 million of the new funding toward its U.S. expansion, including building out its manufacturing network, and has earmarked another $2 million for further development of Scinode. The company employs about 340 people, including roughly 70 scientists, with most of its workforce in India and local teams in the U.S., Japan, Indonesia and the UAE.

Why it matters

Much of the AI-in-chemistry conversation centers on discovery: finding new molecules computationally. Scimplify is targeting the unglamorous middle of the pipeline, turning promising chemistry into qualified, at-scale production, which is where most materials efforts stall. Its use of specialized AI agents to coordinate a large external factory network is a model that could plausibly extend to other contract-heavy industries.

The backdrop is geopolitical. Manufacturers and governments across the West are actively seeking alternatives to Chinese supply of critical materials, particularly rare earths and tungsten. A company that claims to stand up alternative sources quickly, is nearing profitability, and is spreading production across India, the U.S. and Japan is a useful data point for whether supply-chain de-risking can be achieved commercially rather than purely through subsidy.