CuspAI, Others Form Materials Discovery Foundry
CuspAI has raised $450 million in funding and launched a new AI materials discovery venture
By Mark LaPedus
CuspAI has raised $450 million in funding and launched a new materials discovery venture.
Based in Cambridge, U.K., CuspAI has launched the AI Materials Foundry, bringing together a global network of data, labs, compute and scientific expertise for the development of new materials.
Nvidia, Meta, Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, Henkel, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron (TEL) and Lam Research are among the founding members of the AI Materials Foundry. In total, there are over 45 organizations that have joined the group.
Nvidia will provide the compute infrastructure for the group. CuspAI’s proprietary AI platform, MIRA, sits at the heart of the network, enabling partners to run full discovery cycles – from generative materials design through simulation, synthesis route planning, and coordinated experimental validation. The platform is underpinned by the largest curated experimental materials datasets in the world.
The collaboration seeks to end the materials bottleneck constraining progress in various segments, such as semiconductors, clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
“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,” said Chad Edwards, chief executive and co-founder of CuspAI, a two-year-old startup.
Separately, CuspAI also raised $450 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, with participation from Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions.
Additional new investors include Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, AMD Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners, StepStone, Britain’s Sovereign AI Venture Fund, the Netherlands’ Invest-NL and John Doerr. Existing investors Temasek, Basis Set Ventures, Giant Ventures, Touring Capital, Prosus, Phoenix Court and Northzone also participated.
To date, CuspAI has raised over $650 million from investors.
Others are developing a similar technology. SandboxAQ, a supplier of platforms for materials discovery applications, has received government funding to accelerate the development of its technology.