Hive Mind: Reversing climate change

Hive Mind is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tackle climate change. By implementing and leveraging the "Hive Mind" methodology, a unified, hybrid intelligence combining autonomous robots, AI agents, human expertise, and computational predictions, the team aims to combat the challenge of rising CO₂ levels. This new research paradigm is intended to go beyond CO₂ capture and tackle other global challenges in fields like energy and health. We are now seeking visionary donors to join us in battling this urgent crisis.

The Challenge

If the challenges of climate change could be solved with the tools we already have, we would have deployed them already.

Humanity faces an urgent and escalating crisis, driven by centuries of unsustainable practices. From rising CO₂ levels to dwindling clean water supplies, the scale and complexity of these challenges demand radically new approaches. Traditional methods are too slow and too constrained by politics and short-term thinking. The world needs disruptive innovation – not just in what we do, but in how we do it.

Our plan

We are creating a unified, hybrid intelligence – a Hive Mind. This will harness real-time experimental data from AI-powered laboratory robots together with the collective intelligence of diverse, distributed international teams. This ‘physical search engine’ will guide robots to search high-dimensional chemical space for scalable materials that will tackle global challenges – whether by removing atmospheric CO2, harvesting water, or generating sustainable electricity.

The speed and tireless nature of robots, coupled with AI’s ability to navigate the complex chemical search space, makes this approach uniquely suited to address the urgent challenges of climate change.

Our research is unique. There is no example worldwide of this Hive Mind strategy, where global human ‘agents’ are combined with AI agents and computational predictions to create a real-time feedback loop that will drive an autonomous robotic laboratory.

Our goals

We have three key project goals:

1. In the short-term, our AI-led paradigm will accelerate research, enabling faster identification of promising candidate materials to protect the planet.
   
   
2. In the long term, our ambition is to see the successful development of a scalable material that can help reverse climate change. For example, developing a new deployable porous material for direct capture of CO2 from the air, which would be a game changer for humanity.
   
   
3. More broadly, our approach could redefine how humanity addresses global challenges. By leveraging AI tools and global collaboration, we can influence a wide range of research programmes in areas such as health and clean energy production. The open-source nature of our outputs ensures that knowledge and innovation will be accessible to all, promoting equity and further accelerating scientific progress.

What we need

With £50 million we will assemble a world-class team to build the “brain” for the hybrid intelligence system.

This work will include:

• an initial detailed search of more than 25,000 research papers, to produce a fine-tuned large language model for a specific global challenge such as capturing CO2.
• technical staff including AI scientists, software engineers, chemists and roboticists to adapt the mobile robotics platform to this new challenge and to enable global participation.
• a series of workshops to engage more than 500 global scientists and industry participants.

Join us

Today we stand at a tipping point where the confluence of AI and robotics can help forge a new path, revolutionising our approach. We now seek brave and visionary donors, who want to play their part in transforming the rate of scientific progress to meet society’s greatest needs.

Speak to the team >

Watch our robotic chemists in action

In this video, our mobile robotic chemists are being used for autonomous exploratory synthetic chemistry.