A new startup is deploying a team of AI physicists to attack unsolved physics challenges with the goal of making data centers more efficient and sending an interstellar probe into deep space.
Physical Superintelligence launched out of stealth on Tuesday with $58 million in funding, led by the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures. "We think that physics is the biggest domino to fall from a rapid acceleration of agentic science," co-founder Matt Pines told Semafor. The AI physicists, collectively called Emmy, are built with hard verifiers that aim to catch when the AI is being "extremely confident and completely wrong," Pines added.
Data centers are an early use case: PSI hopes to find ways to optimize cooling, power, and electrical flows before the facilities are built, starting with a large site in Texas, Pines said. It's also a partner on a privately funded, AI-planned project that aims to send a craft to Alpha Centauri — the nearest star system to Earth — a trip that would take an estimated 70,000 to 75,000 years.