Today, the Touring Capital team is excited to announce our investment in CuspAI, a new UK-based startup applying state-of-the-art techniques in generative AI and reinforcement learning to accelerate innovation in materials science. Founded by Dr. Max Welling and Dr. Chad Edwards, CuspAI has set out to build a materials search engine to explore vast molecular possibilities in chemistry, with the ultimate goal of discovering novel materials solutions to pressing problems in the industry.
Achieving productivity breakthroughs in these scientific R&D workflows will lead to faster time to market for materials innovation needed to address some of humanity’s most urgent challenges, such as scaling up carbon capture to prevent runaway climate change. Historically, this has been costly with very long lead times spanning years and relying heavily on human trial and error.
We are inspired by the CuspAI’s ambition, which is anchored in the 4th paradigm of scientific discovery where AI, data and computation unlock superpowers for scientists and engineers. At Touring, we are mindful of the current hype cycle around generative AI. With CuspAI, we see potential for a uniquely differentiated strategy bringing together deep domain expertise in ML and chemistry directed towards a commercial, solution-oriented approach validated via engagement with leading industrial players. CuspAI has set out to build task specific foundation models, combined with state of art computational chemistry, tools and experimental data that is the hallmark of a thesis-aligned company for Touring Capital.
Max’s relationship with the Touring team spans over a decade. Max sits in a rarified group of world-leading ML researchers, with numerous accomplishments in his time as a Distinguished Scientist in Microsoft Research, VP at Qualcomm Research, Professor at the University of Amsterdam and a fellow of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. We’ve been continuously impressed with his profound ability to bring ideas and concepts from fundamental physics towards breakthroughs in ML architectures. (Although not completely surprising for someone who first did their PhD in physics under Dutch Nobel laureate Gerard T’ Hooft!)
Chad is a computation chemist who has spent his career in deep-tech commercialization at companies including Google, BASF, and quantum computing leader Quantinuum. His experience driving enterprise partnerships will play a critical role in CuspAI’s commercial success given his deep understanding of how to meaningfully engage with long-established companies. We have been impressed with Chad’s strong reputation in the industry as a great leader.
CuspAI’s leadership is also equipped with Professor Geoffrey Hinton as an advisor; Geoff Hinton is commonly known as the “godfather of modern AI.” As a winner of the prestigious Turing award, Professor Hinton’s influence in the AI ecosystem cannot be understated and we are delighted to see CuspAI benefit as the company develops.
Alongside Hoxton Ventures, Basis Set Ventures, Lightspeed, Northzone, LocalGlobe and Giant Ventures, the Touring Capital team is excited to be part of the journey to take us over the cusp of a revolution in materials science!