Silicon Republic reports that Cambridge-based CuspAI has launched an 'AI Materials Foundry' alongside a $450m Series B led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, with participation from Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions. The round values the two-year-old company at $2.6bn, up from $520m last September. The foundry is a network of data, labs, compute and scientific expertise with more than 45 founding partners, including Nvidia, Meta, Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, Applied Materials and Lam Research. Co-founders Chad Edwards and Max Welling argued in a blog post that the next 50 years of industrial progress will be constrained by materials that do not yet exist. Former Apple and Google executive John Giannandrea is helping build out US operations.