Microalgae offer significant potential in diverse fields, including biofuels, carbon capture, and high-value bioproducts. However, optimizing and scaling microalgae cultivation systems present several challenges due to the dynamic interactions among environmental factors such as light intensity, temperature, pH, nutrient concentration, and CO₂ levels, as well as species-specific biological variability. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML) and automation, have provided innovative solutions to these challenges. This review explored the role of AI in enhancing microalgae technology, focusing on optimizing cultivation conditions, improving CO₂ capture, maximizing biomass production, and automating system processes. Key case studies highlight successful applications of AI in biofuel production, carbon capture projects, and high-value compound manufacturing. Key case studies demonstrate that AI-driven models can increase biomass productivity by up to 15–57%, improve CO₂ biofixation efficiency, and enhance lipid and high-value compound yields by more than 20–43% compared to traditional methods. Additionally, we discussed the limitations of current AI models, particularly in data availability and species-specific variability, and suggested future research directions to enhance the integration of AI and microalgae systems. By leveraging AI’s potential, microalgae technologies can become more efficient, scalable, and economically viable, addressing global sustainability challenges such as energy production and climate change mitigation.

Adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) has been widely utilized as a tool for developing new biological and phenotypic functions to explore strain improvement for microalgal production. Specifically, ALE has been utilized to evolve strains to better adapt to defined conditions. It has become a new solution to improve the performance of strains in microalgae biotechnology. This review mainly summarizes the key results from recent microalgal ALE studies in industrial production. ALE designed for improving cell growth rate, product yield, environmental tolerance and wastewater treatment is discussed to exploit microalgae in various applications. Further development of ALE is proposed, to provide theoretical support for producing the high value-added products from microalgal production.