AI may hold the top spot as Europe’s buzziest sector; but climate tech is following close behind. Cambridge and Amsterdam-based startup CuspAI, which was founded in April and is emerging from stealth today with a $30m seed round, has managed to straddle both those hype machines.
And the company’s seed round has attracted a roll call of well-known VCs from Europe and the US. Hoxton led the round, with Lightspeed, Basis Set, Northzone, Giant Ventures, FJ labs, Zero Prime Ventures and Tiferes Ventures also participating.
Google Deepmind operators Mehdi Ghissassi and Dorothy Chou also participated as angel investors.
CuspAI is a search engine for materials. Users can input the properties they want materials to have, and Cusp will generate the chemical composition needed to achieve it. Cusp’s team says its tech can help produce new materials needed for climate technologies, particularly in carbon capture.
The round is one of Europe’s largest seed rounds this year. “It’s been a whirlwind two months,” says cofounder Dr Chad Edwards, a chemist who previously worked at Google and quantum computing developer Quantinuum.
The talent
Edwards founded Cusp alongside Professor Max Welling, a machine learning scientist at the University of Amsterdam, who also served as lead scientist at Microsoft Research, a research offshoot of the company.
Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, often dubbed the “godfather of AI,” has joined Cusp as a board advisor. Hinton was one of the founding researchers at Google’s Deep Learning department, before quitting last year and warning of the dangers of powerful AI. Cusp founder Welling trained with Hinton.
“Humanity will face many challenges in the coming decade. Some will be caused by AI while others can be solved by AI,” Hinton says..
Capturing carbon
Although Cusp’s tech could theoretically help produce any materials, Edwards says the company has focused on climate applications because “it’s where we believe society should be focusing right now.”
Its first focus is materials that could help capture carbon emissions. Companies working on direct air capture (DAC) — where carbon is pulled directly from the air — are all aiming to get their cost per tonne removed to $100.
Edwards says the price point depends on the materials used, and that Cusp’s tech could develop new ones perfectly suited to the task.
“One of the main costs is the energy used by the direct air capture facilities, so if we can have materials that capture CO2 with lower consumption, then that brings the cost down,” he says.
Beyond capturing carbon, Edwards says Cusp’s tech could help generate materials made from captured carbon, such as sustainable fuels or feedstocks for industrial processes.
Cusp has partnered with Meta, which runs a project called OpenDAC, a group of chemists using Meta’s tech to advance direct air capture. A number of researchers from Meta will be working with Cusp’s team.
Once the search engine is up and running, Cusp will charge companies money to access it and search for materials they need.
It’s not the only startup using AI for making new materials. Last year Google DeepMind alum Jonathan Goodwin launched Orbital Materials, which is also using AI to try and find better materials for carbon capture but is planning to build its own hardware.
CVs incoming
Having only just secured its seed round, Cusp’s team still consists of just its two cofounders. Pulling the best AI talent from older companies could be a challenge; but Edwards says the startup’s climate application has already given it an edge.
“We haven't advertised a single job and we already have quite a large team of people that we have assembled and a really large backlog of candidates,” he says — with around fourteen people poised to join the company.
“They’re all in very well paid jobs at the Big Tech guys but they’re intrinsically motivated to actually use technology in society in a positive way. Culturally, that sets the company up with a very nice starting point.”
