Founded in 2018, Alysophil aims to offer a new approach to the chemical industry that combines continuous flow processes and artificial intelligence implemented in micro-factories.

Philippe Robin first became interested in chemistry when he was a child: “At the age of 11, I was fascinated by my first chemistry experiments”. Since then, the passion has never left him. “After several years in the traditional chemical industry, from lab manager to company president for large groups, I noticed that the chemical industry was faced with more and more technical, regulatory, safety and budgetary constraints. No matter, Philippe Robin decided to launch his vision of modern chemistry, “starting from scratch”. In contrast to traditional industrial chemistry, Philippe Robin opposes continuous flow processes “which require smaller installations and allow us to work on smaller volumes. This is a gain in terms of safety, environmental footprint, investment and operating costs. This is the principle on which Alysophil was born, with the dream of three friends who became partners: Jacques Jacquet, Luc Brunet and myself.

Thanks to his friend and associate Luc Brunet, who is passionate about artificial intelligence, Philippe also understands the potential of using AI in the development process of new molecules. “Initially, I asked him to design an AI capable of predicting the odours of new molecules… He succeeded. So we built our strategy around these two pillars of continuous flow processes and AI.” This is how they developed AlchemAI, “decision-making support tool. AI generates new molecules and predicts their physical/chemical properties (smell, density, toxicity, etc.). It is an effective investigation tool that restricts the field of molecules to be synthesised to those that meet the desired properties. It saves an enormous amount of time and leads to a significant reduction in design costs.

For Philippe Robin, the future of chemistry no longer lies with giant production sites, “at Alysophil, based on the principle of these two pillars of continuous flow chemistry and artificial intelligence, we are developing micro-production plants made autonomous by AI. We offer our customers our compact ChemPocket production units, installed in maritime-type containers, as close as possible to their production sites. This is a total paradigm shift! A small revolution in the world of modern chemistry.“

WHY JOIN BIOECONOMY FOR CHANGE?

“We joined in 2020, very soon after the creation of Alysophil. Today, 50% of our R&D work is based on biosourced molecules. It is a choice. For us, B4C represents an important resource in terms of information and skills, and a pool of potential partners for developing joint projects. We particularly appreciate the events that are Bioket and the 24h of B4C.”