Cambridge-based CuspAI has closed a $100M Series A funding round, co-led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Temasek, with participation from leading investors including Samsung Ventures, Hyundai Motor Group, NVentures, Basis Set Ventures, Prosus Ventures, Northzone, LocalGlobe, Giant Ventures, and others. The round also attracted high-profile angel investors such as Durk Kingma (OpenAI co-founder), Zoubin Ghahramani (Google VP Research), Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox founder), Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face founder), and Victor Riparbelli (Synthesia CEO).
Founded by Dr. Chad Edwards and Prof. Max Welling, CuspAI has developed an AI-driven platform that functions as a search engine for materials, enabling the design of new candidates up to ten times faster than traditional methods. The company already partners with Hyundai on sustainable energy, Kemira on PFAS removal, and Meta on carbon capture.
The funding will support scaling of operations in the US and Asia, further development of the platform, and rapid commercialisation. CuspAI also announced new board members, including Martin van den Brink (former ASML President and CTO) and Lord Browne (former BP CEO), joining advisors Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. This milestone comes just one year after the company’s $30M Seed round, underscoring its rapid rise in the field of AI-driven materials innovation.
Featured image: Credit: CuspAI
