Cambridge, UK-based CuspAI, an applied AI company that has developed a search engine to design new and more efficient materials, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $30M (approximately €28M) in seed funding.
The round was led by Hoxton Ventures, with significant participation from Basis Set Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Other investors in the round include LocalGlobe, Northzone, Touring Capital, Giant Ventures, FJ Labs, Tiferes Ventures, and Zero Prime Ventures. Prominent angel investors, including Mehdi Ghissassi and Dorothy Chou from Google Deepmind, also participated in the round.
Appoints “Godfather of AI”
In addition to the funding, the UK company also announced the appointment of Geoffrey Hinton, known as the ‘Godfather of AI,’ to its advisory board.
Hinton says “Humanity will face many challenges in the coming decade. Some will be caused by AI while others can be solved by AI. I’ve been very impressed by CuspAI and its mission to accelerate the design process of new materials using AI to curb one of humanity’s most urgent challenges – climate change.”
CuspAI: Search engine for materials
CuspAI has been founded by Professor Max Welling, a renowned pioneer in AI and former Distinguished Scientist and VP at Microsoft Research and Qualcomm, and Professor at the University of Amsterdam.
He co-founded the company with Dr. Chad Edwards, a chemist who has spent his career in deep-tech commercialisation, including at Google and BASF.
Most recently, he worked at Quantinuum, the leader in quantum computing.
In addition to the founding team, CuspAI has appointed one of the world’s most accomplished computational chemists as Chief Scientist and assembled a world-leading research team across Cambridge (UK) and Amsterdam (NL).
CuspAI leverages generative AI, deep learning, and molecular simulation to streamline the material design process.
Dr. Chad Edwards, Co-founder and CEO of CuspAI, says, “Our technology can help mitigate this impact by designing materials that efficiently capture carbon dioxide.”
Their platform functions like a search engine for materials, allowing users to request specific properties for new materials on demand.
Professor Max Welling, Co-founder and Chief AI Officer at CuspAI, says, “Imagine a search engine not just for existing materials, but for all potential molecules and materials that could be created. Our AI can generate and evaluate new materials on demand. For example, you can request a material that selectively binds carbon dioxide under specified conditions – the AI then generates, evaluates, and optimises the potential molecular structures that meet those exact criteria. Through careful process optimization and lab testing, we’re able to close the loop and ensure materials are synthesizable, stable, and ultimately useful in production.”
This enables the rapid generation and evaluation of a vast number of novel structures, leading to the discovery of materials with precise functionalities.
“Carbon capture is just the start – the material class we have in mind is well-suited for many other applications including energy storage, catalysis, and gas and water purification. By harnessing AI for design and process optimisation we can create materials and solutions tailored to the specific needs of almost any industry. We are entering the age of ‘precision materials’,” adds Edwards.
Partnership with Meta
The company has partnered with Meta to further its open science contributions focused on the discovery of new materials to address climate change.
Yann Le Cun, VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, says, “The Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team is looking forward to collaborating with CuspAI in their use of AI, including our OpenDAC work, to accelerate the discovery of novel DAC sorbent materials. The world needs fast progress on affordable carbon capture, and we believe that CuspAI’s team is in an excellent position to apply AI-based materials discovery to this pressing problem.”
The investor
Hoxton Ventures focuses is finding Europe’s best early-stage tech startups and building them into large revenue, category-defining companies. The company leads pre-seed or seed rounds and typically invests between $500k to $5 million.
Charles Seely, Partner at Hoxton Ventures, says, “I’ve known Chad for several years and recognized him as a truly gifted individual who could lead an extraordinary team. The partnership that he has forged with Max is one that I’m sure will help solve some of the world’s most critical problems.”
Hussein Kanji, Partner at Hoxton Ventures, says, “Our fund is premised on the idea that European founders would start and win the industry categories of tomorrow. It’s clear that AI can shake up how we design materials, and CuspAI has assembled some of the best people in the world to do this, starting with both Chad and Max.”
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