CuspAI raises $450M at $2.6B valuation for AI materials discovery; 45-company Foundry launches

CuspAI, a Cambridge-based AI startup, closed a $450 million Series B round led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, valuing the company at $2.6 billion—a five-fold jump from its $520 million Series A valuation in 2025. The startup uses generative AI to design novel materials by simulating structures before physical synthesis, compressing what traditionally takes decades of lab work into months.

The round includes backing from Bezos Expeditions, AMD Ventures, and the UK government's Sovereign AI Venture Fund. Concurrently, CuspAI launched the AI Materials Foundry, a 45-member coalition including NVIDIA, Meta, Samsung, Hyundai, Lam Research, and Tokyo Electron, combining compute, lab access, data, and research expertise to accelerate materials discovery. The company is directing 80% of near-term research toward semiconductor materials, targeting rare-metal alternatives (ruthenium, iridium) to reduce supply-chain risk for chipmakers.

For infrastructure builders and chipmakers, this matters: AI-accelerated materials discovery is a newly capital-intensive field that compounds NVIDIA's competitive advantage (it's providing compute to the Foundry), while also creating a differentiated supply of novel semiconductors materials independent of traditional supply chains. CuspAI has no commercial-ready material yet, but the coalition structure and backing signal serious investor conviction that this is a 10-year macro play.