CuspAI, a UK startup using AI to discover new materials, is raising $400m from investors including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s family office Bezos Expeditions and Kleiner Perkins.
The round would value the company at $2.6bn, more than quadruple what it was worth in September last year, when it raised $100m, according to reporting by the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the matter. Term sheets have been signed but the deal has not yet closed, per the same report.
CuspAI declined to comment.
Cambridge-based CuspAI, which was founded in 2024 by Chad Edwards and Max Welling, is one of a number of startups in Europe using AI to discover new materials. Others include Altrove in Paris, Dunia Innovations in Germany and Molecular Quantum Solutions in Denmark.
Cusp’s platform has been described as a search engine for materials. The company has built several AI models, some of which come up with new molecules that could have useful properties across areas like sustainable energy and next-generation AI compute; other models it’s developed then check those molecules and predict how well they'd actually work in the real world.
The company’s goal is to build an AI system that can find the best possible material for any situation.
Earlier reports suggested the company was in talks to raise $200m at a unicorn valuation.
CuspAI’s existing backers include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northzone, NEA and Temasek.
The company also has Yann LeCun, previously Meta’s chief AI scientist and now founder of world models startup AMI Labs, and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, on its board.
CuspAI topped Sifted’s AI 100 last year, a ranking of the most promising startups in the sector valued at under $1bn.
