For Immediate Release

DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY AND SYMYX TECHNOLOGIES ENTER INTO A NEW DISCOVERY AND LICENSING AGREEMENT

September 22, 2000

MIDLAND, MI & SANTA CLARA, CA - The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) and Symyx Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMMX) today announced that they have entered into an agreement to develop catalysts for the manufacturing of advanced pharmaceutical intermediates. Pharmaceutical intermediates are chemical building blocks that are chemically linked to create a pharmaceutical product. Dow will fund the research effort, make payments upon technical success and commercialization and have exclusive rights to use the catalysts in their manufacturing processes.

"Symyx has been an important partner for Dow in the area of materials discovery," said Maggi Walker, business director for Contract Manufacturing Services. "We are pleased to expand the application of their catalyst discovery technologies to our pharmaceutical efforts."

"This is our third agreement with Dow," stated Steven Goldby, chairman and chief executive officer of Symyx. "We now have a relationship with them in each of our three business areas: first in Industry Collaborations, then in Discovery Tools and now in our Proprietary Materials Effort."

Dow Contract Manufacturing Services (CMS), a dedicated business unit of The Dow Chemical Company, offers a broad range of technology and business resources, chemical manufacturing capabilities and process development expertise to companies involved with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, specialty chemical and specialty polymer products. Dow CMS operates more than a dozen integrated manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe, and also has access to the vast manufacturing infrastructure of The Dow Chemical Company, which has 123 manufacturing sites in 32 countries around the world.

Dow is a leading science and technology company that provides innovative chemical, plastic and agricultural products and services to many essential consumer markets. With annual sales of $19 billion, Dow serves customers in 162 countries and a wide range of markets that are vital to human progress, including food, transportation, health and medicine, personal and home care, and building and construction, among others.

Committed to the principles of sustainable development, Dow and its 39,000 employees seek to balance economic, environmental and social responsibilities.

Symyx develops and applies high-speed combinatorial technologies to the discovery of materials for life science, chemical and electronics applications. Symyx provides research services through its Industry Collaborations business, seeks to discover its own materials through Symyx Proprietary Materials programs, and offers selective access to its proprietary technologies, including instruments, software and intellectual property, through its Discovery Tools(TM) Technology Access business. Symyx partners and customers include some of the leading life science and chemical companies in the world, including Applied Biosciences, Aventis, BASF, Bayer, Celanese, Dow, ICI, and Unilever. Symyx was founded by Dr. Alejandro C. Zaffaroni, founder of ALZA, Affymax N.V., Affymetrix and Maxygen, and Dr. Peter G. Schultz, head of the Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics.

Certain statements contained in this release relate to plans or objectives of Symyx for future operations or business strategies, that involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Symyx' control. Symyx' actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors, which include the novel nature of our combinatorial materials discovery technologies and processes, our dependence on the research and development activities of companies in the chemical industry, our inability to predict the pace, quality or number of discoveries of new materials, our new Discovery Tools business, our intellectual property position, possible future fluctuations in our results of operations, our need to attract and retain key personnel and competition. These and other risk factors which could cause our actual results of operations to differ from our forward-looking statements are set forth in greater detail in documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our 10-K dated March 15, 2000. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Symyx undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.

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