battery-metals
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The Geologist Who Turned Rocks Into Rent Checks
For nearly 30 years EMX Royalty did the unglamorous half of mining - it found the ground, then let someone else dig. The payoff was a royalty machine that grew about 17% a year and ended in a US$456 million merger.
Impossible Metals
Impossible Metals is a San Jose-based ocean robotics company building autonomous underwater vehicles that harvest polymetallic nodules from the deep seabed one at a time. Its Eureka Collection System uses AI computer vision and a buoyancy engine to hover above the seafloor, pick up individual nodules containing nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese, and leave nodules with visible marine life untouched - an approach the company positions as a lower-impact alternative to both land mining and the seabed-dredging methods used by rivals.
Open Mineral
Open Mineral is a Swiss-based, AI-driven metals trading firm and digital marketplace that connects miners, smelters, and traders to buy and sell physical metal raw materials - such as copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver concentrates - directly and transparently. Founded in 2017 by former Glencore traders, the company pairs a physical trading desk with proprietary data and pricing algorithms to digitize a historically opaque, relationship-driven industry, and has onboarded hundreds of mining and metals companies across dozens of countries.