A founder with roots in a tiny Welsh village using AI to create miracle materials
he tiny farming village of Llanfyllin, where I spent my childhood summers, has a population of around a thousand. There are more sheep than people. Nestled in the remote Welsh hills, the Cain Valley is about as far removed from Silicon Valley as anywhere you could imagine. Our family home has no phone reception and no broadband access.
So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself backing a Llanfyllin tech entrepreneur in the most competitive AI seed funding round in British history. Surprise turned to astonishment when CuspAI’s founder, Chad Edwards, told me that his classmate at Llanfyllin High School was former Manchester United coach Eric Ramsay, the youngest manager in the history of America’s Major League Soccer.
As we often see in entrepreneurial arcs, the two friends had spurred each other on, each one’s excellence inspiring and expanding the ambition of the other. Their story speaks to Giant’s belief in elite performance cultures that intersect different fields. It also says something profound about ‘British Dynamism’ - the name of Giant’s investment practice focused on pioneering UK companies that truly matter.
Cusp is the world’s first AI-native search engine for materials. While nature took billions of years to perfect molecules, Cusp harnesses AI to unlock trillion-dollar materials breakthroughs in months, not millennia. Instead of scientists spending years on trial-and-error experiments, Cusp allows them to specify the properties they want and uses generative AI, physics-based simulation and reinforcement learning to design entirely new materials from scratch.
The founding team is the most cited globally in this field, comprising world-class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering. Co-Founder Max Welling is one of the world’s most respected AI scientists. CEO Chad Edwards has enjoyed a meteoric rise - he is the first person in his extended family to attend university. He credits his greengrocer father “who showed me the meaning of hard work with his 1am starts.” An inspirational chemistry teacher sparked a love of science which took him to Manchester University for a PhD and then on to build Cambridge decacorn Quantinuum, by way of Google.
The customer pull since the $30M seed round has been explosive. Cusp works with industrial titans including NVIDIA, ASML and Hyundai. Their materials will deliver energy efficient semiconductors, smarter batteries and advanced water purification.
One way Giant consistently supports our companies is senior connectivity to corporates. Early on, we introduced Giant advisory board member Lord Browne, former BP CEO, to Cusp’s founders. Lord Browne joined Cusp’s all-star industrial advisor group, which includes two ‘godfathers’ of modern AI: Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton (another Brit) and Yann LeCun.
“Thank you to the whole Giant team for making this possible. Particular shout out to Tommy for the incredible support and mentorship throughout.”
Europe’s number one AI startup, as ranked by Financial Times / Sifted
And then last summer, Giant introduced Cusp to the leadership of NEA, a key Giant ally and one of America’s most enduring venture firms. Within weeks, NEA co-led a $100M+ Series A alongside Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. Giant tripled down from our Growth fund and invited our industrial LPs to co-invest with us as potential customers for the Cusp.
The round sets Cusp up to deliver on its promise to redesign industry from first principles. This remarkable tale of a founder from the Welsh hills is a reminder that British Dynamism can compete on the world stage.
