Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the UK government have invested in a £2bn British artificial intelligence startup that aims to become a "search engine for rare materials" to accelerate technological breakthroughs.
CuspAI raises $450m in Series B funding
Cambridge-based CuspAI has raised $450m (£330m) in funding from investors including Bezos and the government's sovereign AI fund, valuing the two-year-old business at $2.6bn. The company launched the AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of over 48 tech companies, industrial firms, and research facilities, to develop AI-powered software for discovering new materials for chipmakers and other industries.
CuspAI aims to significantly cut research times and reduce or eliminate the use of rare metals, such as iridium and ruthenium, in chipmakers' supply chains. The coalition includes chipmaker Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and carmaker Hyundai, and will use frontier AI models to discover materials that could improve energy networks, batteries, and semiconductors.
Mission to solve materials challenge
CuspAI co-founders Dr Chad Edwards and Prof Max Welling said: "If we don't make progress fast, the next 50 years of industrial progress will be constrained by a single challenge: the world needs materials that don't yet exist. That's what we're on a mission to solve – combining frontier agentic AI with deep domain expertise, exclusive data access and close customer partnerships."
The Series B funding will enable international expansion, including a new office in Singapore and increased staffing in Cambridge, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tokyo, and the US.
Investor and government support
Josh Coyne, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, which co-led the funding round, said: "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 latest fundraise follows a $100m Series A investment last year. CuspAI is the fourth company to receive funding from the government's sovereign AI fund, which targets early-stage British AI firms. The government did not disclose the size of its investment, which typically ranges from £1m to £10m.
Government and industry backing
Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: "CuspAI is putting the power of AI to work to help us tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the UK and the world today, such as energy and climate change. By backing British companies such as this we are paving the way for breakthroughs that are set to grow our economy, protect the natural world and improve everyone's lives."
CuspAI has also brought on board John Giannandrea, a former Apple and Google executive, to help set up US operations, and is working with Abhi Talwalkar, a board member at AMD and chair of Lam Research.
