The archive · Climate & Energy · Product decision · 2024–2025
CuspAI's materials-search bet: $30M seed to $100M+ Series A for AI-designed materials
Cambridge/Amsterdam startup CuspAI bets generative AI can design carbon-capture and battery materials on demand — $30M seed, then $100M+ Series A.
CuspAI
What the business is
Builds a generative-AI platform that lets engineers specify desired properties and get synthesisable candidate materials, starting with carbon capture, batteries and purification.
Starting capital：$30M seed (June 2024); $100M+ Series A (September 2025)
How it started
Professor Max Welling, an AI researcher and former Microsoft Research distinguished scientist and VP, and CEO Chad Edwards, a chemist who worked at Google, BASF and Quantinuum, founded CuspAI in April 2024 across Cambridge and Amsterdam. Geoffrey Hinton joined as board adviser. The company emerged from stealth in June 2024 with a $30M seed led by Hoxton Ventures.
What happened
In September 2025 CuspAI raised more than $100M in a Series A co-led by NEA and Temasek, with Nvidia's VC arm, Samsung Ventures, LocalGlobe, Northzone and Giant Ventures participating, alongside angels such as OpenAI's Durk Kingma and Hugging Face's Thomas Wolf. It had signed deals with Hyundai, Meta and Finnish chemicals company Kemira, and claimed AI-led discovery is up to ten times faster than traditional methods.
How it ended up
Within roughly 15 months the company went from stealth to a nine-figure Series A with named customers across automotive, chips, energy and climate sectors. Proceeds are earmarked for scaling operations in the US and Asia; the platform still has to prove its designed materials work in production.
Background
CuspAI is a Cambridge and Amsterdam startup founded in April 2024 by Max Welling, an AI professor and former Microsoft Research VP, and Chad Edwards, a chemist who worked at Google, BASF and Quantinuum. Its bet: materials are the shared bottleneck behind clean energy, carbon capture and AI compute, and generative AI can design them on demand.
The platform works like a search engine for the material world: an engineer specifies the properties needed — say, a material that selectively binds carbon dioxide — and the AI generates, evaluates and optimizes candidate molecular structures, with lab testing closing the loop on synthesizability.
CuspAI emerged from stealth in June 2024 with a $30M seed led by Hoxton Ventures, with Lightspeed and Basis Set Ventures participating, and a partnership with Meta's OpenDAC direct-air-capture research project. Fifteen months later it raised more than $100M in a Series A co-led by NEA and Temasek, with Nvidia's VC arm and Samsung Ventures among backers.
By September 2025 the company had signed deals with Hyundai, Meta and Kemira, added ASML veteran Martin van den Brink and former BP CEO John Browne to its advisory board, and was planning expansion into the US and Asia. The open question is whether AI-designed materials actually perform in production — the part no funding round can settle.
What has to be true
- Energy storage, carbon capture, water purification and chip-making all stall on the same thing: new materials that take years to discover.
- Generative AI plus molecular simulation can generate and evaluate millions of candidates on demand instead of screening physical samples one by one.
- Starting with carbon capture gave the young company a concrete climate mission and a first partner in Meta's OpenDAC project.
- A platform that spans automotive, chips, energy and climate diversifies revenue beyond any single sector.
What can be applied
Apply the hottest technology to the least glamorous bottleneck: AI for materials, not another chatbot, won CuspAI a climate wedge and customers in five industries.
Aftermath
As of September 2026 the most recent published facts date from the September 2025 Series A: CuspAI was using the funds to scale in the US and Asia, service deals with Hyundai, Meta and Kemira, and pursue unannounced semiconductor customers. No production-scale material designed by the platform had been publicly confirmed in the sources reviewed.
Sources
- CuspAI raises $30M for AI-designed materials discovery and evaluation on demand
- OpenAI cofounder backs materials discovery platform CuspAI in $100m raise
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