CuspAI, a two-year-old British startup using artificial intelligence to discover new materials, has secured $450 million in a Series B financing round led by venture firms Kleiner Perkins and NEA.
Jeff Bezos’s fund, Bezos Expeditions, participated significantly in the round, which values the Cambridge-based company at $2.6 billion, up from $520 million last September.
The fundraise comes as demand for more efficient semiconductor manufacturing continues to intensify, with CuspAI expecting semiconductor projects to represent 80% of its research efforts this year.
Alongside the funding announcement, CuspAI launched the AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of more than 48 technology companies, industrial firms, and research facilities.
The Foundry aims to combine computing power and scientific resources to develop materials for chipmakers and other industries more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods allow.
Members of the coalition include Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which is seeking new materials across areas such as energy storage and data-center cooling, reflecting the growing resource demands of AI infrastructure.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), whose researchers previously worked with CuspAI on carbon-capture materials, and Hyundai Motor Group are also among the coalition’s participating companies.
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), whose venture unit joined the financing round, has gained a further connection to the startup through the appointment of AMD director and semiconductor veteran Abhi Talwalkar to CuspAI’s board.
Chief Executive Chad Edwards said much of the new funding will support laboratories with Foundry partners in Cambridge, Singapore, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
CuspAI also hired John Giannandrea, a former Google and Apple executive, to work part-time on establishing the company’s California operation.
One focus of the startup’s semiconductor research involves limiting or eliminating the use of rare metals such as ruthenium and iridium, which the company identified as carrying supply-chain risks for chip manufacturers.
In an earlier project with Meta researchers, CuspAI reduced 300 trillion possible carbon-capture structures to 10 candidates and successfully synthesized six of them, though none outperformed materials already commercially available.
Edwards described the project as being completed in six months, which he characterized as a substantial improvement over typical industry development timelines.
CuspAI is now applying a similar approach to materials designed to remove toxic forever chemicals from water, with Kemira Oy, a Finnish chemicals company, expected to synthesize and test 20 structures this year.
Despite its high-profile partnerships and substantial investor backing, none of CuspAI’s projects has yet produced a candidate molecule ready to leave the laboratory, underscoring the long and expensive path to commercial validation.
