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.
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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.
