AI for Atoms: How Periodic Labs is Revolutionizing Materials Engineering with Co-Founder Liam Fedus

AI for Atoms: How Periodic Labs is Revolutionizing Materials Engineering with Co-Founder Liam Fedus

From No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

April 3, 2026 · 29 min

About this episode

Liam Fedus discusses how Periodic Labs is using AI to revolutionize materials engineering.

What happens when you apply the scaling laws of large language models to the physical work of atoms? Elad Gil sits down with Liam Fedus, co-founder at Periodic Labs, which is pioneering an AI foundation lab for atoms. Liam discusses how he pivoted from dark matter physics research to the front lines of artificial intelligence, including stints at Google Brain and working on ChatGPT at OpenAI. He talks about how Periodic is connecting massive language models to the physical world to overcome data bottlenecks in material science. Liam also shares how they use language models as an orchestration layer operating alongside specialized neural nets to run closed-loop physical experiments. They also explore the future of AGI and ASI, as well as the role of robotics in lab automation. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @LiamFedus | @periodiclabs Chapters: 00:00 – Cold Open 00:05 – Liam Fedus Introduction 00:39 – Liam’s Background at Google Brain, OpenAI 05:14 – From ChatGPT to Materials and Atoms 06:34 – Training Data in the Physical World 09:52 – Generalization Across Domains 11:31 –…

People in this episode

Host: Elad Gil

Guest: Liam Fedus

Topics covered

  • AI
  • materials engineering
  • language models
  • data bottlenecks
  • AGI
  • robotics
  • lab automation

Keywords

  • AI
  • materials science
  • language models
  • robotics
  • AGI
  • neural networks
  • data bottlenecks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Periodic Labs, Google Brain, OpenAI

Products: ChatGPT

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