CuspAI

𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥: 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐩𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐁𝐁𝐐 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔. Fresh from a $𝟒𝟓𝟎 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐁, CuspAI Co-founder Max Welling will join Charlotte Jee, News Editor at MIT Technology Review, for a conversation on the next frontier of AI-driven materials discovery. The 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞- 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐦𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐦-𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 company raised the round in July 2026, co-led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, with backing from Bezos Expeditions and the UK Sovereign AI Venture Fund. The raise valued CuspAI at approximately $2.6 billion a major signal of the global ambition emerging from Europe’s deep-tech ecosystem. Alongside the raise, CuspAI launched its AI Materials Foundry, connecting data, laboratories, compute and scientific expertise to accelerate the discovery of new materials. The fireside will explore how AI can move scientific breakthroughs from the lab into real-world applications, shorten research timelines and help Europe build globally competitive technology companies. 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐩𝐀𝐈 Max Welling - Co-founder, CuspAI. Moderated by Charlotte Jee - News Editor, MIT Technology Review. 𝑻𝒆𝒄𝒉𝑩𝑩𝑸 2026 · 𝑩𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒂 𝑪𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓, 𝑪𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒉𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒏 26–27 𝑨𝒖𝒈𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝐵𝑢𝑦 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛! 

On the heels of CuspAI's AI Materials Foundry launch and $450M Series B announcement, we're sharing our excitement and conviction for Chad Edwards, Max Welling, and the Cusp team. 🤩 ➡️ From algorithms to atoms: NEA's Lila Tretikov, Philip Chopin, Andrew Schoen, Thomas Joshi, & Elie de Fressenel detail why we're doubling down on CuspAI, as they build the AI “search engine for the material world” to turn desired properties into real materials for climate, energy, semis, and more. 📝 Check out the blog here: https://lnkd.in/gG8XUfJu

Today, we’re also announcing our $450M Series B funding round, at a valuation of $2.6 billion. It’s a vote of confidence that the most transformative applications of AI are moving beyond the digital world, into the physical world. New materials can unlock performance, sustainability and new solutions to existing intractable problems. This latest capital allows us to continue scaling globally to meet industrial demand, and accelerate breakthrough materials through our AI Materials Foundry. Grateful to our investors - both existing and new - including Kleiner Perkins, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Bezos Expeditions, Temasek, AMD Ventures Glade Brook Capital Partners LLC Lux Capital and many more.

📣 Introducing the AI Materials Foundry - with more than 45 global partners coming together to achieve breakthroughs in semiconductors, clean energy and advanced manufacturing. 💫 Leading companies including Meta, NVIDIA, Hyundai Motor Company, Henkel, Samsung Electronics, Applied Materials, AMD and more - are joining us to accelerate the discovery and development of new materials. For decades, a lack of new materials has bottlenecked progress. Today, the AI Materials Foundry brings together industry partners, data, labs, compute and scientific expertise in one network - orchestrated by CuspAI’s agentic platform. The race to next-generation materials is on. Find out more in the comments…

Chad Edwards, 35, is the co-founder and chief executive of Cusp AI, which is building a discovery engine for materials. Where traditional discovery methods involve years of laboratory work with a low success rate, CuspAI says it can supply equivalent results in minutes. It raised over $100 million in venture capital last year, having secured a partnership with Meta during its initial round of investment when it launched in 2024. It is in the process of raising a further $400 million from investors, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. A chemist by training, Edwards spent his PhD trying to make materials in a lab and believes AI agents can help future PhD candidates become even more effective. Read more:

Hello Singapore! 🇸🇬 The CuspAI team spent time with friends and partners in Singapore last week and it was great to see so much interest in what we're building. We're on a mission to unlock breakthrough materials, and we're growing the team. We're hiring for two roles:  🔬Head of Scientific Applications: https://lnkd.in/ef5V6BzQ  🔬Application Scientist: https://lnkd.in/eYsqdi3b If you're excited about pushing the boundaries of materials science, or know someone who is, we'd love to hear from you. Jingxi Yew Aron Walsh Felix Hanke Vincent A. Irea Mosquera Lois

With CuspAI making headlines today, here's the inspiring backstory of CEO Chad Edwards. I wrote this for The Times when we helped seed Cusp just two years ago. Giant Ventures has backed Cusp six times now in all. It's an extraordinary UK success story speaking to the best this country has to offer. Cusp unlocks trillion-dollar material breakthroughs in months, not millennia. Semiconductor customers include ASML. https://lnkd.in/eVXHjJi4