Fresh Checks: CuspAI

A look into the startups that recently raised capital: the rounds, the investors, and why they said yes.

· Nik Alisha Binti Nik Shazwan · Analyst

· 3 min read

What Does CuspAI Do?

CuspAI uses artificial intelligence as a search engine to discover and design new materials based on any desired chemical and physical traits. Their system leverages deep learning and molecular simulations to test millions of options, thus eliminating the need for time-consuming laboratory testing.

What Made Them Tick For Investors?

Kleiner Perkins

A Competitive Edge: Tangibility of Results

Previous AI models have been able to propose new materials that no laboratory could ever produce. This is the exact idea and unique business model that offers CuspAI a competitive edge over other players in the market, and aligns perfectly with Kleiner Perkins’ investment thesis.

A People-First Approach: Excellent Founder Quality

An idea is only as good as the people behind it - Kleiner Perkins places heavy emphasis on the founders, explicitly citing the team as the reason CuspAI works. CTO Max Welling is as one of the world’s leading AI and machine learning scientists, while CEO Dr. Chad Edwards brings deep-tech credibility from Quantinuum. Alongside this, he holds a PhD in Chemistry, and has spent years synthesising materials in a lab, knowing first-hand of the constraints and limitations. Together, they’re the ideal team to pull this idea off.

Commercial Traction, Not Just a Concept

The idea is already being implemented in industry: with Kemira, a Finnish chemicals company, CuspAI narrowed down 300 trillion possible structures capable of removing PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals’ in water, down to only 20 candidate designs. Thus, shortening research from several years to just a few months.

New Enterprise Associates (NEA)

A World-Leading, Interdisciplinary Team

As with Kleiner Perkins, the founding duo was a major selling point in securing NEA’s investment. Max Welling and Dr. Chad Edwards are highly regarded experts in two fields essential in CuspAI’s success: AI/ML infrastructure and deep-tech, and Chemistry. Alongside this, the team has partnered with notable businesses across several sectors spanning energy to semiconductors and is evidence of their substantial real-world impact.

The Cusp of a New Scientific Era

NEA believes in the emergence of a new era of intelligent systems, where they can design and execute both simulations and experiments, interpret results and iterate to improve upon their findings without human intervention. CuspAI is spearheading this new era, and acts as a bridge between the digital realm in which most AI interfaces are currently present, to the physical world through the synthesis of real materials.

Securing The Future

The acceleration of material discovery allows a range of problems to be solved, ranging from the present to future. A key example is the aforementioned partnership with Kemira to clean PFAS from drinking water. It is currently fixing long-standing technical bottlenecks such as safer batteries and more efficient electronics, and can be geared towards anticipating future demands in lightweight alloys for aerospace and heat-management materials for data centres.