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Startups & Venture·July 20, 2026·1 min read

Cambridge-based CuspAI raised a $450M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, and launched a coalition for AI materials discovery for chip and other industries

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AI-native materials discovery is moving from pharma into the semiconductor supply chain—$450M at Series B plus a coalition push says the bottleneck is now physics and atoms, not just model weights. If you depend on advanced nodes, start tracking which AI materials platforms your foundry and equipment vendors are aligning with.

Startups & Venture

Kai-Fu Lee stopped building AI models and started selling enterprise data infrastructure. Now 01.ai is heading for a Hong Kong IPO.

01.ai’s pivot from pure models to enterprise data infrastructure in China is a read on where defensibility and revenue sit—own the data plumbing and compliance layer, not just the weights. The unwind of offshore structures to target a 2027 Hong Kong IPO is another signal that serious China-facing AI businesses are aligning capital structure with domestic listing paths.