Quick background:
I'm a materials science PhD candidate at East China Normal University & Shanghai Academy of AI for Science. For 7 years, my world was the lab bench synthesizing materials, running spectroscopy, optimizing reaction parameters. Then I taught myself to code, and everything changed.
The moment that started Xyzen:
We tried to use an LLM to run a real chemistry experiment. It read every relevant paper. Wrote a perfect protocol. Designed ideal parameters. Then we pointed it at the actual equipment and it couldn't turn on the stirrer.