Standard Industries Announces Molecule.one as Winner of $1 Million AI Challenge

Novel AI Application to Accelerate the Development and Production of Pharmaceuticals

NEW YORK,  June [11], 2025 – Standard Industries (“Standard”), a privately-held global industrial company with over 20,000 employees across approximately 50 countries, together with its operating company W. R. Grace & Co. (“Grace”), a leading global supplier of specialty chemicals and solutions that enable industries to enhance modern life, today announced Molecule.one as the winner of the Standard Industries Chemical Innovation Challenge: Advancing AI-Assisted Molecular Synthesis (the “Challenge”). Standard has awarded Molecule.one $1 million in recognition of its state-of-the-art AI platform that will accelerate the development and production of pharmaceuticals from cardiovascular and oncology drugs to antibiotics and antivirals.

“We are always evaluating ways to leverage technology to advance the industries we operate in. Molecule.one’s technology does exactly that—creating faster, more efficient ways to produce fine chemicals, which will ultimately accelerate the development and production of pharmaceuticals,” said David Millstone and David Winter, Co-CEOs of Standard. “The submissions were impressive across the board, and we are thrilled to award Molecule.one $1 million in recognition of their important work.”

Standard launched the Challenge last year to address one of chemistry’s most time-intensive problems: chemical retrosynthesis, a process in which chemists work backwards, deconstructing a desired molecule through iterative steps until they arrive at readily available starting materials. This manual task has historically been a time- and resource-consuming bottleneck subject to human error and bias. Recognizing the potential for AI and machine learning capabilities to accelerate both the human and more traditional computer-based retrosynthetic approaches, Standard invited companies, academics, and entrepreneurs from around the world to propose new and innovative ways to improve retrosynthesis by incorporating AI and machine learning into these models. 

With a highly automated lab in Warsaw, Poland and a presence in Boston, Massachusetts, Molecule.one comprises over 30 highly skilled chemists and engineers. The Molecule.one team developed an innovative deep learning platform that can predict a set of paths to synthesize complex molecules. By leveraging large datasets and AI, the technology makes producing chemicals at scale faster, cheaper, and more sustainable.

“At Grace, we’re embracing the potential for AI to help us bring innovative solutions to market faster and more efficiently,” said Brenda Kelly, President of the Material Technologies business at Grace. “In tackling this AI Challenge, Molecule.one has pushed the boundaries of retrosynthesis prediction, making it more precise, accessible, and, most importantly, scalable. In the highly capable hands of our Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO), this new AI platform will enable us to accelerate the development of complex pharmaceutical molecules to meet our customers’ needs and improve everyday lives.”

“To be recognized by a global industrials leader like Standard for our breakthroughs in the important field of retrosynthesis is a true honor, and we are grateful for their support of innovation in the field as well as of our startup,” said Piotr Byrski, Molecule.one’s co-founder and CEO. “Winning this prize will enable us to advance our goal of automating chemistry, doubling down on our unique approach anchored in unprecedentedly accurate and reliable deep models trained on multiple datasets, including proprietary experimental data.”

More than 30 teams entered the Challenge, and an impartial panel of judges from academia and business with expertise and experience in organic synthesis, computationally-assisted synthesis and computational chemistry oversaw the competition and assessed each team's solution through the course of three rigorous evaluation phases. In addition to the winning team, the nine other semifinalist teams that advanced through Phase 1 each received $10,000, and the three other finalists who advanced through Phase 2 each received $100,000.