Latent Space · 3 min instead of 1 h 25 m · Oct 8, 2026
Superconductors were found by trying many things, so speed raises luck
Co-founder & co-CEO, Periodic Labs
Shawn Wang (swyx)Host · Co-founder, AI Engineer
Wrote “The Rise of the AI Engineer” and founded Smol AI, maker of AI News.
About this segment
Cubuk argues the hard part of finding superconductors is synthesis, not ideas, citing nickelates and magnesium diboride. Automation that runs a career's worth of trials in a month widens the surface area for luck.
From “AI Scientists Are Here: Autonomous Labs & Synthesis Superintelligence — Periodic Labs”, Oct 8, 2026. Watch the full episode
“magnesium diboride sat on people's shelves as a precursor for decades before then, and BCS theory had been invented back in 1957.”
Ekin Dogus Cubukat 1:22:51 · Latent Space1:22:51Takeaways
- Promising chemical spaces are easy to name; synthesizing them is the bottleneck
- MgB2 sat on shelves for decades before anyone tested it for superconductivity
- Takedo's 30,000 trials could be run in a month with full automation
In this episode
Full episode- 9:18RL for materials works by rewarding sub-steps, not whole discoveries4:17
1:21:15Superconductors were found by trying many things, so speed raises luck2:32
- 45:43Lab instruments need onboard AI because dumb data capture bottlenecks science7:15Up next
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 1:21:22
Yeah. So, I mean, our view is that it's not hard to think of chemical spaces that would host superconductivity. What's really hard is to synthesize them. That's why we're really emphasizing synthesis superintelligence. So maybe one example to give historically is Alex Mueller, when he thought that transition metal oxides might be a good path to superconductivity, he was actually trying nicolates, the nickel oxygen and some cations, and that didn't work.
- 1:21:48
And then he tried cupraise, just copper oxygen and some cations, and that worked. And then he got a Nobel Prize. But then we know that later on, it turns out nickelase was a good idea. I mean, nickel and copper are next to each other. There's always two layers, right? There are only so many 3D transition metals. And then Harold Huang, one of our Stanford professors here, who's incredible, he realized he can make nickelase in thin film form and show the superconductivity.
- 1:22:13
So, you know, if we have a really good synthesis superintelligence in the lab, and we can really scale up these things. I think we won't run out of ideas or the LLM won't run out of ideas about what directions to try, like 3D transition metals, oxygen. There are very related ideas here. Many people have been trying cobaltates, which is like instead of copper or nickel, you try cobalt. So I think that's super exciting.
- 1:22:37
Maybe one historical example to also study is the Japanese group that discovered magnesium diboride. As you know, that's the highest temperature, ambient pressure, conventional superconductor, and they discovered it by just trying a bunch of materials. I think they tried 30,000 different things. 30 of them seemed to host interesting superconductivity, and MgB2 was one of them. But magnesium diboride sat on people's shelves as a precursor for decades before then, and BCS theory had been invented back in 1957. So the way people found these materials wasn't directly from theory. It wasn't because they couldn't synthesize until then. It was just like they tried a bunch of things.
- 1:23:16
So now imagine if we had this perfect automation that you're describing, which sounds like a dream, and we tried the 30,000 the Takedo group tried over his career in a month. We just really increased the surface area for luck. No, but it's very inspiring what you've done. Congrats on all your success. I feel like you're creating the modern playground. I imagine recruiting must be super easy for you, so I'm just a little bit jealous, but you've worked hard