Sunthetics was built to help pharmaceutical and chemical R&D teams run fewer experiments to reach better outcomes. Since launching, our ML team has continuously evolved the platform’s algorithms to handle increasingly complex problems: more variables, tighter constraints, and higher stakes at scale-up, and our new default algorithm, Lithium, is the most significant update we have released in the past year.

Lithium delivers 40% faster results and smarter optimization strategies than the previous ML package to give you more accurate predictions. It does this using variable-specific modeling and a new set of campaign controls that give research and process development teams more precise direction over how each optimization runs. Lithium is built on a modernized technical foundation and will be the basis for all future platform updates and enhancements going forward.

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Why We Built Lithium

As our customers tackle more complex R&D challenges, the platform needs to keep pace. Teams have come to us with problems involving more variable types, tighter experimental constraints, and higher reliability requirements as programs move toward scale-up and manufacturing. Lithium was built to meet those demands, incorporating customer feedback, advances in our modeling approach, and a modernized infrastructure that makes it faster to build on going forward.

‍What's New In Lithium

• Faster, more accurate, and more powerful: The entire back end has been rebuilt on a modernized foundation — delivering 40% faster results, more accurate predictions, and a more powerful optimization engine overall.
• Campaign goal selection: Choose the optimization strategy that fits your experiment — whether you need to explore, optimize, or prioritize reliability for scale-up. Goals can be changed between campaign iterations.
• Further tailored predictive modeling: Models are now further tailored to each variable type in your experimental system, enhancing prediction accuracy on mixed-variable and chemistry-heavy problems.
•  More flexible input constraints: Improved handling of complex, overlapping constraints with new ingredient selection modes for formulation work.
•  Multi-objective performance tracking: A clearer, quantitative measure of optimization progress across all outputs simultaneously.
• Clearer model quality reporting: Streamlined metrics and severity-tiered warnings with specific guidance on what to do.
• New visualizations: New plots and visual tools to help you understand your experimental system even better and explore multidimensional spaces more effectively.

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Lithium vs. Helium: What's Changing and What's Not

Lithium is now the default algorithm for all new campaigns and will receive all future platform updates, new visualizations, and enhancements going forward. The campaign creation workflow has also been updated for a more intuitive experience when using Lithium.

Helium remains fully active. If you have campaigns in progress, we recommend completing them in Helium and switching to Lithium for your next new project. Note that it is not possible to start a campaign in Helium and switch to Lithium mid-campaign.

Hydrogen, the first-generation algorithm, is now deprecated and no longer available when creating new campaigns. Existing Hydrogen campaigns can still be viewed.

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Lithium Is Now Available on the Sunthetics Platform

Lithium is available to all Sunthetics customers beginning April 2026. Existing customers will receive a release communication with feature guidance. Looking ahead, we are investing in transfer learning from historical experiment data, expanded chemical intelligence, and broader DOE support.

If you are not yet using Sunthetics and want to see how Lithium applies to your work, contact us to request a demo.

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