Fedus: Periodic Labs will build AI co-pilots for space and defense
Liam Fedus · Building an AI Physicist: ChatGPT Co-Creator’s Next Venture · Sep 30, 2025 · at 27:32
Liam Fedus, co-founder of Periodic Labs and former OpenAI VP, discusses the startup's near-term commercial path with a16z General Partner Anjney Midha.
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“Basically co-pilots for engineers, researchers in advanced industries. So maybe perhaps just being in Silicon Valley, we, you know, we really think about like computer oriented work. Everything is digital. Everything is bits, but there's so many industries. Like we were kind of talking about a few, like space, defense, semiconductors, where they're dealing with iteration of materials of physics, and that's part of their workflow. Like how are they designing These new technologies, these new devices, and in the absence of data, in the absence of good systems, they don't really have particularly good tools. That is our opportunity, and these are massive R&D budgets.”
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