Berlin’s Dunia Innovations commits €280M to an autonomous AI-materials GigaLab

At a glance:

• Dunia Innovations commits €280M to an autonomous AI-materials GigaLab in Berlin, aiming to solve the materials-verification bottleneck.
• The facility is backed by a consortium including Siemens, ABB Robotics, NVIDIA, AWS, and ILS, with operations set to begin in 2028.
• It will combine AI, lab automation, and simulation to accelerate advanced materials discovery for catalysts, batteries, and semiconductors.

Announcement and Vision

Dunia Innovations, the Berlin-based deeptech company, announced plans for a 6,000-square-metre, €280m facility called GigaLab, designed to discover and develop advanced materials at industrial scale. The announcement was made on Wednesday, with operations expected to start in 2028, creating over 200 direct jobs.

Dr Alex Hammer, chief executive and co-founder of Dunia, emphasized that the next bottleneck in frontier materials discovery is physical rather than algorithmic. With AI already generating millions of new materials, the demand for experimental verification is exploding, necessitating factories that can do science at industrial scale. 'We need factories that do science at industrial scale. GigaLab will be the first facility of its kind to do exactly that,' Hammer said.

Dunia's Platform and Background

Founded in 2022, Dunia operates an integrated platform combining AI, lab automation, and simulation into a closed-loop system. This serves customers in catalysts, batteries, and semiconductors. The first-generation platform launched in 2023, followed by the second-generation IRIS platform in May 2025.

The company's approach addresses the fragmentation in the published scientific record, which is insufficient for training large-scale models. Simulation alone has also failed to predict real-world material behavior under varying conditions. GigaLab is Dunia's bet to overcome these challenges through integrated, autonomous infrastructure.

Consortium and Technology Partners

The industrial consortium Dunia is assembling around the facility carries most of the strategic weight. Siemens provides digital-twin and process-simulation technology; ABB Robotics provides lab automation for fully autonomous experimentation; AWS handles cloud infrastructure and large-scale analytics; NVIDIA supplies high-performance compute for AI model training via its Inception programme; ILS contributes advanced high-throughput parallel testing equipment.

This partnership architecture mirrors the Siemens-and-NVIDIA combination deployed in industrial robotics, now extending into materials science. Merck has expressed industry interest in GigaLab’s capabilities to accelerate next-generation semiconductor materials.

European Strategic Context

Dr Dirk Demuth, Head of Corporate Development and co-founder of hte GmbH, highlighted the seriousness of the integration as what separates the Berlin GigaLab from prior materials-AI infrastructure. 'We’re building AI, automation, and industrial-grade workflow design all together from the ground up, not bolting them onto each other,' he said.

Dunia positions the project as strategically relevant to European competitiveness, sustainability, and sovereignty. The company expects significant public co-investment alongside venture capital and industrial partners. Separately, Dunia has advocated for a €500m EU-funded materials-testing facility, running in parallel to GigaLab.

Funding and Timeline

On the funding front, Dunia raised approximately $11.5m (€10.6m) in October 2024, co-led by French VC Elaia and Swiss VC redalpine. The company is currently raising additional capital to fund GigaLab. The European Commission’s Horizon programme has supported Dunia’s electrocatalyst-discovery work under a dedicated CORDIS grant.

The €280m GigaLab is materially larger than previous announcements from Dunia. The funding mix for the build includes venture capital, industrial-partner investment, and expected European public co-investment. Whether the 2028 opening timeline holds will depend on the materialization of public co-investment alongside existing commitments.

Wider Deeptech Landscape

The wider European deeptech context shows that VC structures have struggled to underwrite multi-decade, capital-intensive infrastructure bets. Successful first funds, like Berlin-based World Fund’s €300m climate-tech vehicle, are beginning to address this gap. A €280m single-facility commitment with named Siemens, ABB, NVIDIA, and AWS partners is the largest visible European materials-infrastructure announcement of the year.

This project underscores the growing convergence of AI, automation, and industrial scale in materials science, positioning Europe to compete in a critical domain for sustainability and technological sovereignty.