Materials AI startup CuspAI raises £73.9m led by NEA and Temasek
This article covers a Series A round on 11 September 2025 for CuspAI, a Cambridge-based deep-tech startup using AI to accelerate materials discovery, founded by Max Welling and Dr. Chad Edwards. It raised £73.9m, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with backing from Temasek.
What does CuspAI do?
CuspAI provides a platform using artificial intelligence to generate candidate material structures from specified property inputs. Its primary purpose is to accelerate materials discovery by proposing candidate structures that match specified property requirements.
Why is CuspAI useful?
Problem
The fight against climate change needs new materials for carbon capture and sustainable technologies. Traditional materials science is painfully slow, often taking years or decades to discover useful compounds.
Solution
CuspAI helps by using an AI search engine for molecules to generate practical material candidates from scientist-specified properties. This accelerates discovery, delivering new candidate structures up to ten times faster than traditional methods.
How much did CuspAI raise?
CuspAI raised £73.9m ($100m) in a Series A round, co‑led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Temasek alongside existing backers.
Who invested in CuspAI?
The following are the key investors supporting CuspAI:
- New Enterprise Associates (NEA): a US venture capital firm known for backing growth-stage technology and deep-tech companies, with partners active in AI strategy and board roles.
- Temasek: Singapore’s sovereign investor with a global portfolio focused on technology and sustainability.
- NVentures (NVIDIA's VC arm): a corporate venture arm that concentrates on AI, high-performance compute and developer ecosystems.
- Samsung Ventures: Samsung’s investment arm that targets semiconductors, hardware and strategic enterprise software opportunities.
- Hyundai Motor Group: a strategic corporate investor focused on mobility, sustainable technologies and automotive innovation.
- Durk Kingma: an angel investor bringing expertise in large-scale AI systems as an OpenAI co-founder.
- Zoubin Ghahramani: an angel investor known for his work in machine learning research and leadership at DeepMind.
- Arash Ferdowsi: an angel investor with a background in founding consumer cloud services as the founder of Dropbox.
- Thomas Wolf: an angel investor specialising in open-source AI tooling and community-driven model development.
- Victor Riparbelli: an angel investor experienced in building AI-powered media platforms as the founder and CEO of Synthesia.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
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Who founded CuspAI?
The founders of CuspAI are Professor Max Welling (co‑founder and CTO) and Dr. Chad Edwards (co‑founder and CEO).
Where is CuspAI based?
CuspAI is based in Cambridge, UK.
What sector is CuspAI in?
CuspAI operates in the materials discovery sector. This sector creates new substances for technologies such as carbon capture and sustainable energy. In simple terms, it finds materials that help make cleaner, more efficient products.
Key trends and challenges in materials science:
AI-driven acceleration of discovery
Machine learning and generative models are speeding materials discovery, often cutting development time by around tenfold.
Gap between predictions and real-world synthesis
Many AI-proposed materials cannot be synthesised at scale and may need rare metals, like some carbon-capture sorbents.
Data, compute and sustainability constraints
Training models needs large, high-quality datasets and lots of compute, for example GPU clusters, raising energy concerns.
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