LG CNS will join an artificial intelligence (AI) new materials development consortium that includes global big tech corporations such as Nvidia and Meta.
LG CNS said on the 27th that it was selected as a founding member of the global consortium "AI Materials Foundry" of the U.K. AI startup CuspAI.
AI Materials Foundry is a global alliance in which corporations and research institutes in AI, chemistry, materials, and computing infrastructure lead innovation in new materials development using AI. Global big tech such as Nvidia, Meta, and AMD and corporations in new materials such as 3M and Merck are participating. CuspAI provides infrastructure for the entire process from industrial new material design to discovery, validation, and commercialization through AI Materials Foundry.
The consortium links participating corporations' experimental data, research networks, and computing infrastructure with CuspAI's agentic AI platform. The goal is to reduce the time and expense required for the design, candidate discovery, validation, and commercialization of industrial new materials.
CuspAI, headquartered in London, is an AI startup that combines AI and materials science to shorten the new materials development process and designs and explores optimized new substances through AI. Geoffrey Hinton, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics, and others are serving as advisors. It recently raised about 680 billion won (about $450 million) and was valued at about 4 trillion won, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos participating as a major investor.
LG CNS will use the CuspAI platform to support domestic corporations in advanced industries such as semiconductors, chemicals, and energy in discovering new materials. When users input conditions and properties for developing desired substances—such as compounds with excellent thermal stability or materials with high carbon capture efficiency—AI generates and validates a vast number of candidate substances based on learned experimental data. Kemira, a Finnish chemical corporation, used this platform to cut a development cycle that took years to about six months and explored about 300 trillion molecular structures to derive 20 new material candidates.
In addition, as a platform delivery partner, LG CNS will help domestic manufacturing and materials corporations develop new materials by leveraging the global research ecosystem without having to build expensive research equipment or large-scale AI infrastructure themselves. It will provide everything from materials data processing and interpretation of validation results to platform build-out, operation, and maintenance, enabling clients to carry out new materials development projects without a dedicated AI organization.
The platform also has safeguards for technology leakage and intellectual property (IP). Client data is isolated and managed on dedicated independent servers and is not reused to train AI models. The client corporation will also hold ownership of patents related to new materials.
Jang Min-yong, executive director and head of the Chemicals/Battery Business Unit at LG CNS, said, "In the field of new materials development, raising time and expense efficiency directly translates to corporations' core competitiveness," and added, "Since AI is a necessity, not a choice, we will fully play our role as an AX partner so domestic manufacturing and materials corporations can leverage a world-class AI-based new materials research ecosystem to generate tangible business results early."