UK government, Bezos back CuspAI's $450 million round as startup seeks to discover new materials

July 20 (Reuters) - Britain's CuspAI said on Monday it has raised $450 million from investors including the UK government and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' investment fund, as the startup looks to discover brand-new materials that could advance important industries, including chips. 

CuspAI also launched AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of more than 45 companies, including chip designer Nvidia and social media firm Meta, to bring together computing resources needed for software that would help researchers develop new materials.

The Series B round was led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA and valued CuspAI at $2.6 billion. The startup is looking to expand its operations across the U.S., Asia-Pacific and Europe.  

"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," said co-founders of CuspAI Chad Edwards and Max Welling in their blog post on Medium.

The collaboration seeks to end the materials bottleneck constraining progress, with semiconductors, clean energy and advanced manufacturing among the industries facing the challenge, according to the startup. 

CuspAI said its AI platform, MIRA, enables partners to run full discovery cycles — "from generative materials design through simulation, synthesis route planning and coordinated experimental validation."

Joining the UK's Sovereign AI Venture Fund and Bezos Expeditions as new investors are Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, AMD Ventures and the Netherlands' Invest-NL.

CuspAI named Advanced Micro Devices board member and semiconductor veteran Abhi Talwalkar as its advisory board member, among modern AI pioneers Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton. 

The startup also said it has hired former Apple and Google executive John Giannandrea, who is helping establish its U.S. foundry operations.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)