Polymerize

Polymerize is a Singapore-headquartered software company that sells a cloud-based materials informatics platform for research and development teams in the polymer, chemicals and advanced materials industries. The platform combines experiment and formulation data management with machine learning models that predict material properties, recommend new formulations or alternative ingredients to meet target properties such as elasticity, hardness or viscosity, and support design of experiments. Sources describe the product as helping geographically distributed R&D teams consolidate past and current experimental data, design new experiments, and receive AI-based formulation recommendations, with the stated aim of reducing R&D cost and shortening time-to-market.

The company organizes its offering into three named components: Polymerize Connect, a centralized data backbone unifying experiments, formulations and results; Polymerize Labs, described as 35+ domain-guided multi-modal AI models that predict properties and optimize formulations with explainable outputs; and Polymerize One, a full-service offering that pairs the platform with a global prototyping and testing partner network and domain-expert support for companies lacking in-house synthesis or testing infrastructure. The company markets enterprise security credentials including ISO 27001, SOC 2 (Type II), and GDPR/CCPA compliance, with isolated per-customer data environments.

Stated application areas include polymers and plastics, specialty chemicals, advanced materials, and adhesives and sealants, with earlier coverage citing focus segments in automotive, adhesives, paints and coatings, specialty chemicals, and packaging.

Founding story

Founded in 2020 in Singapore by Kunal Sandeep, a repeat SaaS founder with prior stints at KPMG and Subex, and Dr. Abhijit Salvekar, a materials scientist who worked as a product researcher at Japanese materials company AGC Inc. (formerly Asahi Glass). The founders say they were motivated by inefficiencies in materials formulation R&D, where methods were manual and failed to leverage data from prior experiments, risking missed formulations with unique properties.

Business model

B2B software-as-a-service sold to corporate R&D organizations, supplemented by a services-inclusive offering (Polymerize One) that bundles the platform with access to a partner network of prototyping and testing labs and domain-expert consulting. The company states that 85% of customers expand their platform use year-over-year, indicating an expansion-oriented account model.

Subscription-based SaaS licensing of the materials informatics platform, with an additional service-led package combining the platform with prototyping, testing and expert support.

Traction

Company-reported figures include 500+ R&D teams across 12 industries, 65% faster lab-to-production scale-up, 50% reduction in failed experiments within three months (cited for 92% of users), 3.1x ROI within six months, and 85% year-over-year expansion among customers. A 2024 partner press release states customer surveys reported development times accelerated up to three times and roughly 30% cost savings. Earlier coverage (2022) reported customers in Japan, Singapore and India, including one medium and one large customer in adhesives and phase change materials. REHAU Group is cited as an implementation, per the Meraxis CEO.

Latest developments

The most recent dated development in the sources is the September 2024 strategic partnership with Meraxis, a plastics distributor with over EUR 2 billion in sales and around 30 locations worldwide, aimed at bringing Polymerize's platform to European converters and producers; Meraxis is also a shareholder and its CEO cites an implementation within the REHAU Group. The current website markets a three-part product line (Connect, Labs, One), 35+ domain AI models, explainable AI agents, and 500+ R&D teams as users.