CuspAI raises $450 million at $2.6 billion valuation

CuspAI has raised a $450 million Series B at a $2.6 billion valuation, giving the two-year-old Cambridge startup one of the larger European AI financings tied to scientific research. The round shows that investors are still willing to pay up for AI companies outside software automation when the pitch is tied to semiconductors, energy and manufacturing.

Kleiner Perkins and NEA led the financing, according to CuspAI. Bezos Expeditions, the family office of Jeff Bezos, also participated. The company named Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, AMD Ventures, Britain’s Sovereign AI Venture Fund, the Netherlands’ Invest-NL and John Doerr among the new investors.

CuspAI did not disclose revenue, customer contracts, burn rate or headcount. It said the money will support expansion across the United States, Europe and Asia.

The valuation matches earlier Financial Times reporting that CuspAI was discussing a raise at $2.6 billion. That price is more than four times the valuation attached to its $100 million round in September last year, according to Sifted.

Materials discovery gets an AI platform pitch

CuspAI was founded in 2024 by Chad Edwards and Max Welling. The company says it is building software to identify new materials for use cases including chips, clean energy systems and advanced manufacturing. That puts it in a capital-intensive corner of AI where software models need to connect with lab work, simulation and physical validation.

Alongside the funding, CuspAI announced what it calls the AI Materials Foundry, a network meant to combine compute, laboratories, proprietary data and scientific expertise. The company said more than 45 organizations have signed on as founding members.

Named members include Nvidia, which CuspAI said will provide compute infrastructure, as well as Meta’s Fundamental AI Research team, Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, Hitachi High-Tech and Merck. CuspAI said its MIRA platform will manage the workflow from candidate material design through simulation and experimental validation.

That structure is the more concrete part of the announcement. AI materials companies can generate many possible candidates in software, but the commercial bottleneck is proving that a proposed material can be made, tested and used in an industrial setting. CuspAI is positioning the foundry as a way to shorten that loop, though it did not provide performance benchmarks or timelines for commercialization.

“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,” CEO and cofounder Chad Edwards said in the company’s announcement.

European deeptech keeps attracting larger rounds

CuspAI’s investor list now includes earlier backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northzone, NEA and Temasek, according to Sifted. Its board includes Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton, two prominent AI researchers, with Hinton also a Nobel laureate.

Sifted ranked CuspAI first in its AI 100 list last year, which covered European AI startups then valued below $1 billion. The new round moves the company well beyond that threshold and into the smaller group of European AI startups able to raise late-stage-style capital before disclosing much about commercial traction.

The financing also gives CuspAI more room to build a cross-border operating base while competing for compute access, lab partnerships and scientific talent. Those inputs are expensive, and the company’s new valuation leaves less room for vague progress. Investors are now underwriting not just model capability, but whether CuspAI can turn generated materials into validated assets that industry partners can use.

This story draws on original reporting from Sifted.