SANTA CLARA, CA, November 12, 2007—Symyx Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMMX) today announced availability of a system designed to automate the manual, expensive and time–consuming process of screening inactive substances used as carriers for active pharmaceutical ingredients. The Symyx Benchtop System, winner of the Association for Laboratory Automation’s 2007 New Product Award, automates parallel processing of multiple steps of experimental procedures on one deck. By automating the screening of excipients, the Excipient Compatibility system provides a rational basis for excipient selection, improves the design of experiments, decreases product time-to-market and supports quality initiatives.

Gerard Abraham, president of Symyx Tools, said, "Our mission is to help researchers perform experimentation more quickly, precisely and broadly than ever before. Symyx Benchtop Systems deliver value, enable innovation and are designed to grow with the needs of our customers."

The Excipient Compatibility System comes with:

• automated instrument control
• flexible Symyx Software for storing, retrieving and searching data on an applications database to share and standardize experiments across internal and external labs
• sample processing capabilities (powder dispensing, heating, cooling, mixing, vortexing, dry powder whisking, on-deck heated filtration)
• sample analysis capabilities (weights, pH, sample imaging)

The system integrates solid powder and liquid dispense on the same platform with on-deck weighing to ensure analytical accuracy. It also includes Symyx Software for automated instrument control and data analysis and is scalable to power fully integrated workflows that aggregate data from multiple instruments into individual databases for visualization and analysis.

For more information about Symyx Benchtop Systems and our other offerings, please contact inforequest@symyx.com

Symyx Technologies, Inc. is the R&D execution partner to the life sciences, chemicals, energy, consumer products and electronics industries. Symyx provides electronic lab notebook and scientific decision-support software, automated lab systems (workflows) and collaborative research services to improve R&D productivity. In October 2007, Symyx acquired MDL Information Systems, Inc., a leading provider of innovative informatics software, databases and services that accelerate successful scientific R&D by improving the speed and quality of scientists' decision making. Information about Symyx, including reports and other information filed by Symyx with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is available at www.symyx.com.