CuspAI, a Cambridge, UK-based AI-powered materials discovery platform, has raised €393.2M ($450M) in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA. The company builds an AI search engine that lets industrial teams specify exact material properties and generates novel, synthesizable candidates through its AI Materials Foundry ecosystem. The capital will expand labs in Cambridge, Singapore, and the San Francisco Bay Area while scaling the 45-plus partner network.
AI Materials Foundry Draws Global Partners
The timing aligns with surging demand for advanced materials in semiconductors, energy storage, and climate tech. SandboxAQ raised $450M Series E in April 2025, while Orbital Industries secured $50M Series B in May 2026. CuspAI differentiates through a pure AI-native generative approach and an unmatched advisory board including Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Turing Award Laureate Yann LeCun.
Materials Bottleneck Constrains Industrial Progress
Traditional materials discovery takes 10 to 20 years of trial-and-error cycles. CuspAI claims its platform compresses this to months by running a five-step pipeline of define, generate, simulate, synthesize, and scale. One project with Kemira evaluated roughly 300 trillion candidate structures for PFAS removal in six months.
Generative Models Replace Physics-Only Simulation
CuspAI integrates generative AI with high-fidelity simulation and lab validation through its AI Materials Foundry. Unlike Schrödinger’s physics-based molecular simulation platform or SandboxAQ’s hybrid AI-quantum approach, CuspAI focuses on end-to-end generative design that produces candidates engineers can synthesize in standard facilities. The company also launched the open-source kUPS molecular simulation engine, achieving up to 49 times higher throughput than legacy tools.
"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." — Chad Edwards and Max Welling, Co-Founders of CuspAI
Kleiner Perkins and NEA Co-Lead Record Round
Kleiner Perkins and NEA co-led the round with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Temasek, AMD Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, and the U.K. Sovereign AI Venture Fund. The presence of both mission-driven climate investors and strategic semiconductor backers signals conviction that AI-native materials discovery has reached commercial viability.
Market for AI Materials Discovery Expands Rapidly
The AI in materials discovery market is projected to grow from $0.97B in 2026 to $2.77B by 2030 at 30% CAGR. Broader estimates place the sector at $3.8B in 2025, rising to $19.6B by 2034. Government programs such as the CHIPS Act are accelerating demand, evidenced by SandboxAQ’s separate $500M award for semiconductor materials work.
World-Class Advisors Signal Technical Credibility
CEO Chad Edwards and CTO Max Welling bring deep expertise in chemistry and machine learning, respectively. The advisory board includes Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, former ASML CTO Martin van den Brink, and former bp CEO Lord John Browne. This combination of AI pioneers and industry operators provides rare credibility across both foundational models and physical deployment.
Singapore Office and Lab Expansion Underway
With the new funding CuspAI is opening an office in Singapore, growing teams across Cambridge, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tokyo, and the United States, and expanding lab capacity in three continents. The company has already run concurrent programs in semiconductors, energy storage, and carbon capture with partners including Samsung, Hyundai, Applied Materials, and Meta.