Jeff Bezos’ investment firm, Bezos Expeditions, joined a $450 million Series B funding round for Cambridge-based AI startup CuspAI, pushing its valuation to $2.6 billion – a roughly fivefold jump from $520 million. Nvidia and Meta have also signed on as partners in CuspAI’s new AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of over 45 partners including Samsung and Hyundai. The initiative targets a critical shortage of raw chip materials, as gallium demand is projected to outpace supply by 10% by 2030, with China controlling 99% of refined gallium.
Bezos Expeditions backed CuspAI, a Cambridge startup that just hit a $2.6 billion valuation after closing a $450 million Series B round on July 20. Kleiner Perkins and NEA led the round, with participation from AMD Ventures and the UK government’s Sovereign AI Venture Fund.
The valuation represents roughly a fivefold jump from about $520 million last September. This Jeff Bezos AI startup, founded in 2024, uses a platform called MIRA to test candidate materials that would normally take a lab years to work through by hand.
CuspAI also launched the AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of over 45 partners that includes Nvidia, Meta, Samsung, and Hyundai Motor Group. Chad Edwards, CuspAI’s co-founder and CEO, said chipmakers are “frantically searching for new materials.”
The shortage pushing AI chip materials to the front is about raw materials, not memory chips or electricity. The International Energy Agency projected that data center demand for gallium could run about 10% ahead of supply by 2030, and China currently controls approximately 99% of refined gallium worldwide.
Other elements like iridium, ruthenium, and tantalum are also getting harder and pricier to source. Josh Coyne, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, said “CuspAI built a search engine that changes that.”
CuspAI remains a private company with no IPO on the horizon, so retail investors cannot buy in directly. Investors can track public companies connected to the story, as Nvidia and Meta both stand to gain if the startup delivers usable materials at scale.
Bezos made a similar bet before, backing manufacturing-focused startup Prometheus in November. The Nvidia and Meta partnership and the wider story are worth tracking, as CuspAI’s progress on AI chip materials will likely show up first in how fast chipmakers scale new materials into production.
