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Jeff Bezos and UK government invest in £2bn British startup CuspAI
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Jeff Bezos and the UK government have invested in CuspAI, a British artificial intelligence startup valued at £2bn ($2.6bn) that aims to become the "search engine for rare materials." The Cambridge-based company raised $450m (£330m) in series B funding from investors including Bezos and the government's sovereign AI fund, valuing the two-year-old business at $2.6bn. The investment underscores growing efforts to leverage AI for discovering new materials critical to technological progress.
CuspAI has launched the AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of more than 48 tech companies, industrial firms and research facilities. The coalition includes chipmaker Nvidia, Meta Platforms, and carmaker Hyundai, aiming to use frontier AI to discover new materials for chipmakers and other industries. The company hopes to significantly cut research times and reduce reliance on rare metals like iridium and ruthenium in supply chains.
The company's co-founders, Dr Chad Edwards and Prof Max Welling, stated that the world needs materials that don't yet exist to drive the next 50 years of industrial progress. They said CuspAI is combining frontier agentic AI with deep domain expertise, exclusive data access, and close customer partnerships to solve this challenge. The series B funding will enable international expansion, including a new office in Singapore and increased staff in Cambridge, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tokyo, and the US.
Josh Coyne, a partner at Kleiner Perkins which co-led the funding round, noted that most big technological leaps depend on materials, and the next set of breakthroughs in carbon capture, semiconductors, and clean water is waiting on undiscovered materials. He described CuspAI as a search engine that changes that dynamic. The latest fundraise follows a $100m series A investment last year.
CuspAI is the fourth company to receive funding from the government's sovereign AI fund, which targets early-stage British AI firms. The fund typically invests between £1m and £10m per startup, with criteria including a UK main office and British founders. Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said CuspAI is putting AI to work on challenges like energy and climate change, backing British companies to drive economic growth and improve lives.
The company has also brought on board John Giannandrea, a former Apple and Google executive, to help set up US operations. Additionally, CuspAI is working with Abhi Talwalkar, a board member at AMD and chair of Lam Research. Looking ahead, CuspAI aims to accelerate the discovery of new materials for energy networks, batteries, and semiconductors, potentially reducing constraints on industrial progress and advancing the AI revolution.
