Bezos backs CuspAI as startup teams up with Nvidia to hunt for chipmaking materials

Jeff Bezos has invested in CuspAI, a British startup which on Monday unveiled a partnership with Nvidia and a number of other industry leaders as it hunts for breakthroughs in semiconductors, clean energy and advanced manufacturing.

The $450 million fundraise, which values CuspAI at $2.6 billion, was led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, with significant participation from Jeff Bezos' Bezos Expeditions. Additional new investors include Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, AMD Ventures, and Britain's Sovereign AI Venture Fund.

CuspAI uses artificial intelligence to simulate the performance of novel materials, narrowing the huge number of possibilities for laboratory testing.

"Most big leaps in technology come down to a material, and the next set, from cheaper carbon capture to semiconductors and cleaner water, is stuck waiting on materials nobody has discovered yet," Josh Coyne, partner at Kleiner Perkins, said in a statement. "CuspAI built a search engine that changes that."

CuspAI is one of a new wave of AI companies looking to apply the technology to the physical world.

Bezos' own company Prometheus, which was founded in 2025 and has raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation, is creating AI for invention and physical engineering.

The Britain-based CuspAI is opening a new office in Singapore and growing teams in the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Japan and the U.S.

The startup has also launched what it's calling an "AI Materials Foundry," a network of data, labs, compute and scientific expertise running on CuspAI's AI platform.

Nvidia is among the 45 organizations that will provide the compute infrastructure. Meta's Fundamental AI Research Team is also joining the initiative.

"As AI transforms the physical world, new materials will open up new frontiers across semiconductors, energy and advanced manufacturing," Chad Edwards, CEO and cofounder, CuspAI, said.

"The AI Materials Foundry brings NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure together with world-class chemistry and materials expertise to help power the next generation of materials discovery."