10 Sep 2025
Prosus Ventures Backs CuspAI’s $100M+ Series A to Revolutionise Materials Discovery with AI
NEA and Temasek co-lead; Prosus Ventures joins alongside NVIDIA, Samsung, Hyundai, and others to support the “AI search engine for the materials world”
Prosus Ventures today announced its participation in the $100M+ Series A funding round for CuspAI, the frontier AI company pioneering a new approach to materials discovery. The round was co-led by NEA and Temasek, with additional participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, Basis Set Ventures, FJ Labs, Giant Ventures, LocalGlobe, Northzone, Tiferes Ventures, Touring Capital, and a group of renowned angel investors.
Founded in 2024 by Dr. Chad Edwards and Prof. Max Welling, CuspAI has developed an AI “search engine” for the material world. Its platform enables customers to specify the exact properties they need and generates new, synthesizable candidates up to 10x faster than traditional discovery methods.
In its first year, CuspAI has secured partnerships with global leaders including Hyundai Motor Group (sustainable energy applications), Kemira (PFAS removal), and Meta (carbon capture, via the world’s largest direct air capture database, ODAC25). Additional collaborations are forthcoming, including in the semiconductor sector.
Prosus backs a stellar European team scaling frontier AI
CuspAI has already built momentum with partnerships across automotive, semiconductors, energy, and climate. Its platform shows how AI can transform science itself — compressing discovery cycles and accelerating innovation across industries.
For Prosus Ventures, this investment reflects our thesis of backing frontier AI platforms that can transform foundational industries. With headquarters in Cambridge and teams in Amsterdam and Berlin, CuspAI represents the best of Europe’s AI ecosystem, led by a world-class founding team. CuspAI was founded in 2024 by Dr. Chad Edwards, a chemist turned deep-tech entrepreneur who previously scaled quantum computing unicorn Quantinuum, and Prof. Max Welling, a globally recognised AI pioneer and former Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research, and VP of Technology at Qualcomm.
“Material science is one of the most exciting frontiers for AI, and some of the most transformative breakthroughs will come in areas yet to be discovered,” said Sandeep Bakshi, Head of European Investments at Prosus Ventures. “CuspAI is at the forefront of that shift — redefining how new materials are created and accelerating innovation across industries from semiconductors to clean energy. With an exceptional founding team, CuspAI shows the strength of Europe’s AI ecosystem. Europe is a core focus for Prosus, with our headquarters in Amsterdam, and we’re proud to support Chad and Max as they scale their vision worldwide.”
This investment also complements Prosus Ventures’ broader frontier technology portfolio, which includes Tierra Biosciences (synthetic biology), Neara (infrastructure digital twins), and Oxford Ionics (quantum computing) — the latter of which was recently announced to be acquired by IonQ in a landmark quantum acquisition of over $1bn.
Scaling CuspAI’s mission
The Series A financing comes a year after CuspAI came out of stealth with a $30M Seed round. CuspAI will now look to expand its global footprint, including scaling its operations in the US and Asia to serve increasing customer demand.
“Next-generation AI compute, clean air and water and sustainable energy – these multi-billion-dollar global challenges share a common barrier: materials,” said CEO Chad Edwards said. “CuspAI’s mission is to change that. In just a year, we’ve gone from concept to partnerships with world leaders in automotive, semiconductors, energy, and climate. This funding allows us to scale our platform and deliver transformative materials to market faster. We’re grateful for the support of our investors, and the strategic backing from our customers as we accelerate into our next phase of our growth.”
To support the company’s rapid commercialization, CuspAI has also expanded its advisory board with Martin van den Brink, former President and CTO of ASML and a key architect of Europe’s semiconductor leadership, and Lord John Browne, former BP CEO and current Chair of the UK Government’s Council for Science and Technology. They join existing advisors Prof. Geoffrey Hinton and Prof. Yann LeCun — Turing Award-winning “godfathers of AI” — alongside Prof. Kristin Persson and Verity Harding, bringing unparalleled expertise across AI, semiconductors, and energy to help CuspAI scale globally.
About CuspAI
CuspAI is a frontier AI company pioneering the discovery of breakthrough materials to power human progress. Combining state-of-the-art generative AI with advanced molecular and physics based simulations, CuspAI designs and validates materials in months rather than decades. CuspAI’s founding team is among the most cited in the world. Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with teams in Amsterdam and Berlin, the company partners with global leaders in automotive, energy, semiconductors and climate. www.cusp.ai
About Prosus
Prosus is the power behind the world’s leading lifestyle ecommerce brands, across Europe, India, and Latin America, unlocking an AI-first world for our 2 billion customers.
The Prosus technology ecosystem spans food delivery, payments, classifieds, travel, events, and mobility. Our integrated approach enhances user engagement and creates the foundation for unprecedented AI capabilities through proprietary data and cross-service intelligence.
Through Prosus Ventures, we invest in companies which inspire and support the Prosus ecosystem. We search for new opportunities at the leading edge of AI and ecommerce, the digital AI workforce and in frontier technologies, such as robotics, drones and synbio.
The team actively backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to improve people’s everyday lives.
To find out more, please visit www.prosus.com.