July 20 (Reuters) - Britain's CuspAI said on Monday it has

raised $450 million from investors including the UK government

and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' investment fund, as the startup

looks to discover brand-new materials that could advance

important industries, including chips.

CuspAI also launched AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of more

than 45 companies, including chip designer Nvidia ( NVDA ) and

social media firm Meta, to bring together computing

resources needed for software that would help researchers

develop new materials.

The Series B round was led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA and valued

CuspAI at $2.6 billion. The startup is looking to expand its

operations across the U.S., Asia-Pacific and Europe.

"If we don't make progress fast, the next 50 years of industrial

progress will be constrained by a single challenge: the world

needs materials that don't yet exist," said co-founders of

CuspAI Chad Edwards and Max Welling in their blog post on

Medium.

The collaboration seeks to end the materials bottleneck

constraining progress, with semiconductors, clean energy and

advanced manufacturing among the industries facing the

challenge, according to the startup.

CuspAI said its AI platform, MIRA, enables partners to run full

discovery cycles - "from generative materials design through

simulation, synthesis route planning and coordinated

experimental validation."

Joining the UK's Sovereign AI Venture Fund and Bezos

Expeditions as new investors are Glade Brook Capital Partners,

Lux Capital, AMD Ventures and the Netherlands' Invest-NL.

CuspAI named Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) board member and

semiconductor veteran Abhi Talwalkar as its advisory board

member, among modern AI pioneers Yann LeCun and Geoffrey

Hinton.

The startup also said it has hired former Apple and Google

executive John Giannandrea, who is helping establish its U.S.

foundry operations.