Microsoft
Qualcomm
UC Irvine
Utrecht University
Chad EdwardsCo-founder and CEO · CuspAIFounder↗Both at CuspAI
Researcher · Academic · Founder · Executive
Max Welling
CuspAICo-founder and CTO
University of AmsterdamFull Professor
🇳🇱 DutchBorn 1968
Welling co-created variational autoencoders, which learn to generate new examples from data[1], and graph convolutional networks, which learn from relationships such as molecular bonds.[2] His work also helps models quantify uncertainty[3], and he co-founded CuspAI to apply AI to materials discovery.[4]
Career & education
Current rolesCuspAI2024-presentCo-founder and CTOUniversity of Amsterdam2012-presentFull Professor
CuspAI2024-presentUniversity of Amsterdam2012-presentPreviously
Education
Work and education history is primarily focused on AI-relevant roles and may not be comprehensive.
Citation Trend
Total citations to scholarly work, including research papers, technical reports, books and theses, as recorded by Google Scholar. Each point is a dated snapshot.
citations239,391As of Nov 1, '26
citations+5,037Since last snapshot, Oct 1, '26
Selected contributions
Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes
With Durk KingmaVariational autoencoders learn compact representations of data to generate new examples.
References
- Auto-Encoding Variational Bayesarxiv.org
Original Kingma/Welling work introduces efficient variational learning of generative latent-variable models.
- Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networksarxiv.org
Original Kipf/Welling paper develops graph-convolution learning over graph structure and node features; molecular bonds are an illustrative graph relationship, not a claim about its original benchmark.
- Bayesian Learning via Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamicsicml.cc
Original Welling/Teh paper introduces scalable Bayesian posterior sampling and explicitly discusses quantifying parameter uncertainty.
- CuspAI — founders and materials discoverycusp.ai
Current official company page identifies Welling as cofounder/CTO and describes materials-discovery purpose.
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Reviewed August 8, 2026 · Checked for accuracy and new information.