PANews reported on August 9th that Techinasia reported that Andreessen Horowitz has agreed to lead a $200 million funding round in Periodic Labs, a months-old startup focused on artificial intelligence for materials science. The investment is expected to bring Periodic Labs' valuation to $1 billion before a new round of funding.

Periodic Labs was founded by Liam Fedus, former vice president of research at OpenAI, and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, a former research scientist at DeepMind. The company aims to use artificial intelligence to research and discover new materials. OpenAI is expected to participate in this round of funding, but the specific terms have not yet been finalized.