Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the UK government's sovereign AI fund have invested in CuspAI, a Cambridge-based artificial intelligence startup valued at $2.6bn (£2bn), as reported by The Guardian.
The two-year-old firm secured $450m (£330m) in its latest funding round. This follows a $100m Series A investment raised last year.
CuspAI aims to function as a specialized search engine for rare materials, using artificial intelligence to accelerate technological breakthroughs.
The company launched the AI Materials Foundry, a coalition consisting of more than 48 technology firms, industrial companies, and research facilities.
Coalition members include industry giants such as Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and Hyundai. The initiative utilizes advanced frontier AI models to discover novel materials.
These new materials could improve the efficiency of energy networks and batteries, while boosting semiconductor power to support AI development.
CuspAI targets cutting research times and reducing or eliminating reliance on rare metals, including iridium and ruthenium, within chipmaking supply chains.
"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," said CuspAI co-founders Dr Chad Edwards and Prof Max Welling.
"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 world simply can’t make the progress it needs to with known materials, that much is clear," the co-founders added.
Global Expansion and Government Backing
The Series B funding round was co-led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. CuspAI plans to use the capital to open a new office in Singapore.
The company also intends to expand its workforce across Cambridge, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tokyo, and the United States.
"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," stated Josh Coyne, partner at Kleiner Perkins.
CuspAI is the fourth company funded by the UK government's sovereign AI fund, which aims to help early-stage British firms scale internationally.
The government did not reveal its exact investment amount, though the fund typically provides equity investments between £1m and £10m.
Funding eligibility requires startups to maintain a primary UK office and have British founders.
"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," said Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall.
To support its US operations, CuspAI brought in former Apple and Google executive John Giannandrea.
The startup is also collaborating with Abhi Talwalkar, board member at AMD and chair of Lam Research.
