FAIRmat

What FAIRmat does

FAIRmat is a non-profit research consortium organized under FAIR-DI e.V. and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of Germany's National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) initiative (project 460197019). It was constituted in October 2021 as the NFDI consortium for condensed-matter physics and the chemical physics of solids, bringing together twelve member institutes across Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium including Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, KIT, TUM, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Ruhr-University Bochum, and Radboud University. The consortium is led by spokesperson Prof. Dr. Claudia Draxl and deputy spokesperson Prof. Christoph T. Koch, with approximately 21 listed core staff distributed across partner institutions.

The consortium's core product is the NOMAD Laboratory, an open-source web-based data management platform for materials science research data. NOMAD comprises the Repository & Archive (storing over 19 million records with DOI assignment and version control), the Encyclopedia (a materials-oriented public browser), the AI Toolkit (Jupyter notebooks with unsupervised learning, deep learning, decision trees, and symbolic regression methods including SISSO), NOMAD Oasis (self-hosted federated deployments), and Electronic Lab Notebook functionality. Supporting tooling includes pynxtools (for converting experimental data to the NeXus standard) and DMP4PS (an RDMO-based tool for DFG-compliant data management plans). The platform supports 40+ simulation codes and is integrated with eLabFTW, RDMO, and NeXus community standards.

FAIRmat operates as a community-driven, grant-funded consortium with no commercial pricing. It reaches its academic user base through tutorials (16+ conducted), seminars, an annual Users Meeting, presence at major physics and materials science conferences (DPG, MRS, APS, EUROMAT), YouTube, Discord, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. The headquarters is co-located at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Zum Großen Windkanal 2, 12489 Berlin), with distributed team locations in Erlangen, Bochum, Garching, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, and Kaiserslautern. Revenue is exclusively public grant funding from DFG, with a second funding period approved in 2026.

Name

FAIRmat

Legal name

FAIR-DI e.V.

Website

https://fairmat-nfdi.eu

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

FAIRmat is a DFG-funded non-profit consortium (under FAIR-DI e.V.) building the open-source NOMAD platform for FAIR data management in condensed-matter physics and materials science, serving academic researchers across 12 European member institutes.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Research Data Infrastructure for Materials Science

akta.pro primary industry

Data Virtualization & Federation (HDAEACAH)

Keywords

• Research data infrastructure
• Materials science data management
• FAIR data principles
• Open-source data repository
• Condensed-matter physics informatics

Headquarters

HQ city

Berlin

HQ country

Germany

HQ region

Europe

Offices8 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. DFG/NFDI Funding: FAIRmat is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) as part of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) initiative. Project number 460197019. Second funding period approved in 2026.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

FAIRmat builds and operates an open-source FAIR data infrastructure for condensed-matter physics and the chemical physics of solids. Its core product is the NOMAD Laboratory platform, which provides a repository and archive for uploading, sharing and publishing materials science research data with DOI assignment, a materials-oriented encyclopedia, an AI toolkit for analytics and machine learning, electronic lab notebooks, and the NOMAD Oasis federated deployment option. The consortium also delivers the DMP4PS service for funder-aligned data management plans and pynxtools for NeXus-standard data conversion.

Product overview

FAIRmat is a consortium of the NFDI building a FAIR data infrastructure for condensed-matter physics and the chemical physics of solids. The core product is NOMAD Lab, a comprehensive web-based platform comprising several integrated services: the NOMAD Repository & Archive for data storage and sharing with DOI assignment, the NOMAD Encyclopedia for materials-oriented data exploration, the NOMAD AI Toolkit for analytics and machine learning analysis, and NOMAD Oasis for local institutional deployments. Additional offerings include DMP4PS for data management planning and pynxtools for experimental data conversion. The platform supports complex workflows including DFT, beyond-DFT calculations, and molecular dynamics simulations.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• NOMAD Laboratory Open-source web-based research data management platform for materials science that integrates a repository and archive, an encyclopedia, an AI Toolkit, electronic lab notebooks, and metainfo services. Designed for academic researchers in condensed-matter physics and the chemical physics of solids at universities, Helmholtz, Leibniz, Max Planck and other research institutes.
• NOMAD Repository & Archive Repository service for uploading, storing, sharing, and publishing materials science research data with DOI assignment and version control, serving computational and experimental materials researchers worldwide.
• NOMAD Encyclopedia Web-based public infrastructure providing materials-oriented views and navigation of data contained in the NOMAD Repository & Archive for materials science researchers.
• NOMAD AI Toolkit Analytics platform running Jupyter notebooks for AI-based analysis of materials science data stored in NOMAD Archive, including machine learning, deep learning, clustering, decision trees, and symbolic regression methods for academic and research users.
• NOMAD Oasis Local deployment option that allows institutes, universities, and research groups to operate their own NOMAD instance with customised configurations, schemas, ELNs, and data policies, for institutional and research-facility users.
• DMP4PS (Data Management Plans for Physical Sciences) RDMO-based web service for creating and maintaining Data Management Plans aligned with DFG requirements and other national and European research funding frameworks, aimed at academic researchers submitting grant proposals.
• pynxtools Standalone software tools developed by FAIRmat in collaboration with the scientific community that convert experimental data and metadata to the NeXus community standard, enabling integration of experimental data into the NOMAD platform for materials science researchers.

Quantifiable outcome

• 19M+ searchable records in NOMAD Repository
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

AI capability7 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered strategic and core.

• OSCARS Horizon Europe ProjectstrategicStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 October 2024FAIR-DI partnership in the Horizon Europe OSCARS project (Findable Big Data from Various Material Characterisation Techniques) led by Prof. Claudia Draxl, focused on enhancing findability of experimental datasets across photon and neutron facilities.
• NFDI (National Research Data Infrastructure)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFAIRmat is a consortium of NFDI, the German National Research Data Infrastructure initiative. NFDI provides the framework and funding for FAIRmat to build FAIR data infrastructure for condensed-matter physics and chemical physics of solids.
• FAIR-DI e.V.coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFAIR-DI is a non-profit association that established the international research data infrastructure for materials science. FAIRmat is the NFDI consortium phase of this initiative. FAIR-DI has 12 member institutes across Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium including Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, KIT, TUM, and others.
• NOMAD CoE (Centre of Excellence)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerNOMAD CoE is a Horizon 2020 European Centre of Excellence focused on bringing ab initio codes and AI tools to exascale performance. NOMAD CoE and FAIRmat jointly develop the NOMAD Laboratory infrastructure.
• NOMAD LaboratorycoreTechnology or IntegrationNOMAD Laboratory is the research group and infrastructure led by Claudia Draxl at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, developing the NOMAD platform for materials science data management.
• Humboldt-Universität zu BerlincoreImplementation/ SI/ Consulting PartnerHU Berlin hosts the FAIRmat headquarters and NOMAD HUB data center. Claudia Draxl leads both FAIRmat and the NOMAD Laboratory at HU Berlin.
• Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF)coreTechnology or IntegrationMPCDF has been running the NOMAD infrastructure since its founding and provides computational resources and data facility expertise for the consortium.
• FAIR-DI Member InstitutescoreStrategic or Co-development Partner12 member institutes: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Max Planck Computing and Data Facility, Radboud University, University of Twente, Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung, Technical University of Munich, TU Dresden, Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, Université catholique de Louvain, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Ruhr-University Bochum.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• OQMD (Open Quantum Materials Database): Northwestern University's open database of DFT-computed thermodynamic and structural properties for inorganic compounds. Targets the same community of computational materials scientists and competes for AI training data contributions.
• Materials Project: U.S. Department of Energy–funded open database of computed materials properties (mostly DFT-derived), serving the same computational materials science community as FAIRmat. Competes head-to-head for researcher data contributions and AI training corpora.
• Materials Cloud: EPFL/MARVEL-led open platform for computational materials science data sharing, with tightly integrated simulation, analysis, and archiving tools. Direct functional peer within the European academic materials community.
• AFLOW: Duke University's high-throughput computational materials repository and toolset (AFLOW/AFLUX), serving condensed-matter and crystal-structure researchers. Overlaps directly with FAIRmat's scope of inorganic crystalline materials data and DFT integration.
• Dataverse: Open-source research data repository software widely deployed by universities and consortia. Comparable as a self-hosted, federated data management platform, although less domain-specialized for materials science.
• JARVIS: NIST's integrated repository for materials informatics combining DFT, force-field, and experimental data with AI/ML tooling. Highly comparable to FAIRmat in combining multi-modal materials data with downstream AI/ML workflows.

Broad incumbents

• European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): EU-wide initiative building federated research data infrastructure across disciplines. Represents the broader umbrella in which FAIRmat is embedded and a potential long-term platform competitor for materials data findability and reuse.
• Figshare: Commercial research data repository and DOI-minting service used by institutions globally. Competes for the same researcher deposit use case at a more general-purpose level, including FAIR-aligned metadata.
• Zenodo: CERN-hosted general-purpose open research data repository used across all scientific disciplines. A broader incumbent alternative where materials scientists may deposit datasets when domain-specific tools are not required.
• Citrine Informatics: Commercial materials informatics platform offering AI-driven materials data infrastructure. Comparable in target market (materials science) and AI tooling but operates as a commercial vendor rather than a public consortium.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/c/TheNOMADLaboratory
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/fairmat-nfdi

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles8 records

Subsidiaries2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about FAIRmat