CuspAI: Bezos backs $2.6bn materials-AI startup

Jeff Bezos appears to have settled on his AI thesis, and it is not chatbots. It is the physical world.

CuspAI, a two-year-old Cambridge startup that uses AI to design new materials, is in talks to raise about $400mn at a $2.6bn valuation, the Financial Times reports. The round is led by Bezos Expeditions, the Amazon founder’s family office, alongside Kleiner Perkins. Term sheets have been signed, but the deal has not closed, and CuspAI declined to comment.

If it lands, it would more than quadruple the company’s $520mn valuation from September, a 5x jump in nine months.

A ‘search engine for the material world’

CuspAI was founded in 2024 by Chad Edwards, a chemist who helped build quantum-computing firm Quantinuum, and Max Welling, a machine-learning pioneer who was a distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research. Its advisory board includes two of AI’s most decorated names, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun.