UK government backs British AI startup CuspAI in $450M funding round

Cambridge-based AI startup CuspAI has raised $450 million in fresh funding.

Investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the UK government.

The company will use the funds to speed up the discovery of new materials for industries such as semiconductors and clean energy.

The Series B funding round values the two-year-old company at $2.6 billion and marks one of the largest investments in a British AI startup focused on scientific discovery.

The company said the new capital will be used to expand internationally while scaling its artificial intelligence platform designed to discover materials that do not yet exist.

The funding also coincides with the launch of CuspAI's AI Materials Foundry, a collaboration involving more than 45 technology companies, industrial groups and research organisations that aims to combine advanced AI models, scientific data and computing infrastructure to speed up the development of next-generation materials.

AI targets the future of material science

Unlike many AI companies focused on software applications, CuspAI is applying frontier AI models to solve challenges in the physical world by identifying new materials for industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, batteries, energy infrastructure and carbon capture.

The company hopes its technology can significantly shorten research timelines while reducing or even eliminating dependence on scarce metals such as iridium and ruthenium, which are widely used in semiconductor production.

The newly launched AI Materials Foundry brings together computing resources, laboratory capabilities, and scientific expertise on CuspAI's platform.

Among the organisations participating are Nvidia, which will contribute computing infrastructure, Meta's Fundamental AI Research team, Hyundai, and dozens of other industrial and research partners.

CuspAI co-founders Dr Chad Edwards and Professor Max Welling said existing materials will not be sufficient to sustain future technological progress.

"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," they said.

"That's what we're on a mission to solve – combining frontier agentic AI with deep domain expertise, exclusive data access and close customer partnerships. The world simply can't make the progress it needs to with known materials; that much is clear."

Global expansion plans

The latest fundraising follows a $100 million Series A round completed last year and will support a broader international footprint.

CuspAI plans to establish a new office in Singapore while expanding teams across Cambridge, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tokyo and the United States as it builds its global research and engineering capabilities.

The company believes demand for AI-assisted scientific discovery will continue to rise as governments and businesses search for breakthroughs in energy efficiency, chip manufacturing and industrial sustainability.

Josh Coyne, partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which co-led the latest investment round, said materials science has become a critical bottleneck for technological progress.

"Most big leaps in technology come down to a material, and the next set, from cheaper carbon capture to semiconductors and cleaner water, is stuck waiting on materials nobody has discovered yet," Coyne said.

"CuspAI built a search engine that changes that."

Government backs British AI champions

The investment also represents another deployment from the UK government's sovereign AI fund, which supports early-stage British artificial intelligence companies with ambitions to compete internationally.

CuspAI becomes the fourth company to receive backing from the initiative, which typically makes equity investments ranging from £1 million to £10 million.

The government did not disclose the size of its participation in the funding round.

Companies receiving support from the sovereign AI fund are required to maintain their primary office in the UK, while their founders must be British.

The latest investment reflects the government's broader effort to strengthen Britain's AI ecosystem and retain high-growth technology businesses amid increasing global competition for AI talent and capital.

Growing interest in AI for physical industries

CuspAI is part of a new generation of AI companies applying advanced machine learning to scientific research and industrial engineering rather than consumer software.

The approach has attracted growing investor attention as companies look beyond generative AI toward applications that could transform manufacturing, energy systems and advanced materials.

Jeff Bezos has also backed similar efforts through Prometheus, an AI company founded in 2025 that develops artificial intelligence for invention and engineering.

Prometheus has reportedly raised $12 billion and is valued at around $41 billion.

By positioning itself as what it describes as a "search engine for rare materials," CuspAI is aiming to help industries overcome constraints that have slowed innovation in areas including semiconductor performance, battery efficiency, cleaner energy technologies and sustainable industrial production.

With support from global technology leaders and government funding, the company is betting that AI-driven materials discovery could become one of the next major frontiers in the race to commercialise artificial intelligence.