The U.K. startup, now valued at $2.6 billion, is directing 80% of its near-term research toward semiconductor materials
Ernesto Ruscio / GC Images
CuspAI, a Cambridge, U.K.-based artificial intelligence startup focused on materials discovery, raised $450 million in Series B financing on Monday and launched a coalition of technology and industrial partners it calls the AI Materials Foundry. The round values the company at $2.6 billion, up from $520 million last September, according to Bloomberg.
Venture firms Kleiner Perkins and NEA led the round, with participation from Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, AMD $AMD Ventures, Britain's Sovereign AI Venture Fund, and others, the company said. Existing investors including Temasek and Prosus also participated.
The AI Materials Foundry brings together more than 45 organizations — including Nvidia $NVDA, Meta $META, Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, and Lam Research $LRCX — to pool computing resources, laboratory access, and scientific expertise on CuspAI's platform, the company said. Chad Edwards, CuspAI's co-founder and chief executive officer, said much of the new funding will support lab operations in Cambridge, Singapore, and the San Francisco Bay Area, according to Bloomberg.
CuspAI's platform applies AI to model how new materials would perform, filtering an otherwise vast search space down to the most promising candidates before any physical testing takes place, according to CNBC. Edwards said that semiconductors will absorb 80% of the company's research bandwidth this year, including work aimed at removing or replacing supply-constrained rare metals — among them ruthenium and iridium — from chipmaking workflows.
Josh Coyne, partner at Kleiner Perkins, said in a statement: "Most big leaps in technology come down to a material, and the next set, from cheaper carbon capture to semiconductors and cleaner water, is stuck waiting on materials nobody has discovered yet. CuspAI built a search engine that changes that."
The company was founded by Chad Edwards alongside Max Welling, a prominent Amsterdam-based machine learning researcher. Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton, whose work laid much of the groundwork for modern AI, serve on CuspAI's advisory board. Also on Monday, CuspAI added Abhi Talwalkar — who serves on AMD's board and chairs Lam Research — to that same advisory body, and announced that John Giannandrea, who held senior roles at both Apple $AAPL and Google $GOOGL, has joined part-time to help stand up the company's California presence.
The Series B follows a $100 million-plus Series A raised less than a year ago, also led by NEA and Temasek, the company said. CuspAI is opening a new office in Singapore and expanding teams in the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, and the U.S.
For all its high-profile backing and industry alliances, CuspAI has not yet advanced any project to the point where a candidate material is ready for commercial development; the company's main competitors find themselves in the same position.
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