New AI-Designed Materials Show Promising Potential to Remove “Forever Chemicals” from Drinking Water in Industry-First Breakthrough

Kemira and CuspAI have applied generative AI end-to-end to the design of new materials targeting the removal of PFAS from water at trace concentrations — becoming the first commercial partnership to do so.

The project explored a design space of approximately 300 trillion possible material structures and delivered more than 5,000 novel material designs with property data for three priority PFAS molecules: GenX, PFBS and PFOS.

These were narrowed to around 20 selected priority candidates, now advancing to the next phase of development and testing.

This process used to take years — our discovery project took six months.

Kemira set us a demanding industrial brief: materials needed to target PFAS at sub-parts-per-billion concentrations, using chemistry that is water-stable, environmentally compatible, synthesisable and cost-effective.

We’re proud to be making progress on an AI application as vital and urgent as clean water.

Read the announcement in full.