- CuspAI Secures $100M+ Series A to Revolutionise Materials Discovery with AI
- NEA and Temasek lead landmark raise; Samsung, Hyundai and others join
- Commercial partnerships span automotive, semiconductors, water purification and climate tech
CAMBRIDGE, UK – 10th SEPTEMBER 2025 – CuspAI, the frontier AI company reimagining how the world discovers and develops new materials, today announced the close of its $100+ million Series A funding round.
The round was co-led by US fund New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Temasek, with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Samsung Ventures, Hyundai Motor Group, and returning investors.
Other firms participating include Basis Set Ventures, FJ Labs, Giant Ventures, LocalGlobe, Northzone, Prosus Ventures, Tiferes Ventures and Touring Capital.
Angel investors include Durk Kingma (OpenAI Co-Founder), Zoubin Ghahramani (Google DeepMind VP Research), Arash Ferdowsi (Founder of Dropbox), Thomas Wolf (Founder of Hugging Face) and Victor Riparbelli (Founder CEO of Synthesia).
An AI ‘search engine’ for the material world: CuspAI’s platform acts like a search engine for materials, enabling customers to specify the exact properties they need and generating new, synthesisable candidates up to 10x faster than traditional discovery methods. CuspAI’s technology is materials agnostic, with potential for impact across multiple industries where breakthroughs can unlock billions in value.
CuspAI CEO and Co-founder Chad Edwards said:
“Next-generation AI compute, clean air and water and sustainable energy – these
multi-billion-dollar global challenges share a common barrier: materials. CuspAI’s mission is to change that. In just a year, we’ve gone from concept to partnerships with world leaders in automotive, semiconductors, energy, and climate.
“This funding allows us to scale our platform and deliver transformative materials to market faster. We’re grateful for the support of our investors, and the strategic backing from our customers as we accelerate into our next phase of our growth.”
CuspAI Co-founder and CTO Max Welling said:
“Humanity faces a compelling opportunity: effective, thoughtful AI development could help solve some of our toughest global challenges, from developing sustainable energy systems to curbing climate change. CuspAI is building the next generation tools to make this possible.
“Breakthrough materials could be the solution to delivering large-scale scientific and environmental impact, alongside progress for industry. Our team is uniquely positioned to deliver on that potential.”
Lila Tretikov, Partner and Head of AI Strategy at NEA and former Deputy CTO at Microsoft, who will join the CuspAI board, said:
“AI’s most profound promise emerges when it moves beyond the everyday and becomes a catalyst for discovery, deepening our command of chemistry, biology, and physics, and accelerating the design of materials that redefine what is possible. CuspAI harnessed this power to shutter long-accepted engineering limits, enabling breakthroughs across industries that can elevate the quality of life for generations to come in months rather than decades.”
In just its first year, the company has forged multi-sector commercial partnerships, including:
- Hyundai: A previously unannounced collaboration to work on sustainable energy applications
- Kemira: the Helsinki NASDAǪ-listed public chemicals company, to work on PFAS removal
- Meta: to work on carbon capture – with a collaboration on the world’s largest direct air capture (DAC) database, ODAC25
- Additional partnerships still yet to be announced, including in the semiconductor sector
To support the company’s rapidly expanding commercialisation efforts, two globally recognised leaders in semiconductors and energy will join CuspAI’s advisory board:
- Martin van den Brink, former President and CTO of ASML, a key architect of Europe’s semiconductor leadership.
- Lord John Browne, former BP CEO, Chair of the Francis Crick Institute, and current Chair of the UK Government’s Council for Science and Technology.
They join existing advisors Prof. Geoffrey Hinton and Prof. Yann LeCun – Turing Award-winning “godfathers of AI” – alongside Prof. Kristin Persson and Verity Harding.
CuspAI was founded in 2024 by Dr Chad Edwards, a chemist turned deep-tech entrepreneur who previously scaled quantum computing unicorn Ǫuantinuum, and Prof. Max Welling, a globally recognised AI pioneer and former Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research, and VP of Technology at Ǫualcomm.
The Series A financing comes a year after CuspAI came out of stealth with a $30M Seed round. CuspAI will now look to expand its global footprint, including scaling its operations in the US and Asia to serve increasing customer demand.
Notes to editors:
About CuspAI
CuspAI is a frontier AI company pioneering the discovery of breakthrough materials to power human progress. Combining state-of-the-art generative AI with advanced molecular and physics based simulations, CuspAI designs and validates materials in months rather than decades.
CuspAI’s founding team is among the most cited in the world. Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with teams in Amsterdam and Berlin, the company partners with global leaders in automotive, energy, semiconductors and climate. www.cusp.ai
Additional quotes:
A spokesperson for Samsung Ventures said:
“CuspAI is developing a foundational platform at the critical intersection of artificial intelligence and materials science. We believe their approach has the potential to unlock significant innovation across a range of industries, and we are pleased to support them as they scale their vision.”
Keith Noh, Vice President Head of ZERO1NE Group at Hyundai Motor Group said:
“Hyundai Motor Group is advancing human progress through innovation and this requires embracing convictions that challenge the status quo. With CuspAI as our partner, we will leverage the power of AI to advance our performance and sustainability goals.
“We believe novel materials offer an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate progress towards a better, cleaner, more efficient future.”
Antti Salminen, CEO of Kemira, said:
“We’re proud to be a commercial partner of CuspAI – we chose them because we see the clear potential for AI to speed up the precision and impact of new materials discovery and they have fast emerged as the leaders in this approach.
“Our first collaboration together is focused on removing PFAS, so-called ‘forever chemicals’, from water. This partnership allows us to harness the power of AI to drive materials innovation, improve efficiency and deliver superior and sustainable solutions to our own customers.”
Brooke Seawell, NEA Venture Partner said:
“AI isn’t just promising a revolution in materials science, it’s already delivering one. By decoding the complexity of our material world, it’s starting to unlock breakthroughs from climate mitigation to faster, more efficient compute. With their unique approach and bold vision, the CuspAI team is well-positioned in this transformative space and I’m excited to be a part of it.”
