Indian AI Materials Startup Scimplify Raises $25 Million at $250 Million Valuation to Loosen Chinese Control of Specialty Chemicals

Bengaluru-based materials startup Scimplify has raised $25 million in an all-equity strategic round led by Hitachi Ventures, with two of its own customers — German adhesives group Henkel and US compounds maker Teknor Apex — joining as new investors. Existing backers Accel India, Bertelsmann India Investments, Omnivore and 3one4 Capital also participated. A person familiar with the transaction put the post-money valuation at $250 million, up from $150 million after a $40 million Series B in March 2025; the company confirmed the round brings total equity funding to $80 million but declined to confirm the valuation itself.

Founded in 2023, Scimplify sits in the unglamorous middle of the AI boom: specialty chemicals and critical materials. Manufacturers trying to reduce reliance on suppliers concentrated in China need alternative production routes, qualified facilities and quality documentation — work that historically takes 12 to 18 months from requirement to delivered material. Co-founder Sachin Santhosh told TechCrunch that in some cases Scimplify has compressed that to two months.

The connective tissue is Scinode, the proprietary AI platform that coordinates the whole chain. It identifies suitable production routes and manufacturing facilities, tracks quality and regulatory requirements, and runs specialized agents for research, manufacturing and quality control. "Each of these agents is basically solving for what a customer would want, working backward from the customer's requirement," Santhosh said, adding that the agents also retain customer context for future orders.

Scimplify develops processes at research facilities in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, then transfers them to a network of more than 500 partner factories for commercial production. About 90% of manufacturing currently happens in India; the company plans to extend the network to the US and Japan over the next year as it chases customers in both markets.

The commercial numbers, all company-provided: an annualized revenue run rate of about $200 million, tripling from a year earlier, with a $400 million target for next year. US revenue has grown sixfold to roughly $60 million annualized and now accounts for around 30% of the business; customers outside India contribute more than half of revenue, versus under 5% about 18 months ago. Scimplify has been EBITDA-positive for the past two months and expects to turn profitable after tax this month.

Demand is shifting toward exactly the categories where supply is most concentrated. Energy, electronics and defense now generate 45% to 50% of revenue, up from under 15% a year ago, as AI infrastructure pulls in electronics and energy materials and ongoing wars lift defense orders. The startup is producing tungsten derivatives from scrap — a metal where China dominates mining and refining — and working on rare earth materials, another category with heavily China-dependent supply chains. Customers include TDK, BASF and Hitachi.

Of the new capital, about $7.5 million is earmarked for US expansion, including building out the manufacturing network there, and $2 million for further Scinode development. The company employs about 340 people, roughly 70 of them scientists, with local teams in India, the US, Japan, Indonesia and the UAE.

The bet underneath the round is that qualification, not discovery, is the bottleneck. AI has already accelerated the search for candidate materials; what remains slow is turning a promising chemistry into a qualified, commercially available product at scale. If Scinode-style coordination really cuts that to months, the strategic prize is not just faster chemicals — it is an alternative supply base for the materials that AI datacenters, chips and energy systems increasingly depend on.