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 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, Meta, Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, and Lam Research — 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.