copper
(10)
Tim Cherkasov
Tim Cherkasov is the co-founder and CEO of Trace (YC S25), an AI-native workflow orchestration platform that routes tasks between human teams and AI agents. A serial founder since age 17 with a fintech and data science background, he built and shut down the crypto-portfolio startup Clustr before pivoting into Trace, which topped the YC Launchpad leaderboard for the Summer 2025 cohort and raised a $3M seed round in early 2026.
SiTration, Inc.
SiTration is a Cambridge, Massachusetts materials-recovery company spun out of MIT that uses a patented, ultra-durable porous silicon membrane paired with electro-extraction to pull critical metals - lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and precious metals - out of mining waste, spent lithium-ion batteries, and refining streams. By replacing chemical-heavy, acid-dissolution processes with a tunable, energy-efficient membrane, SiTration aims to make the recovery of the metals behind batteries, EV motors, wind turbines, and data centers cheaper and cleaner.
Still Bright
Still Bright is a Newark, New Jersey hard-tech company reinventing how the world makes copper. Its patented RACER process (Rapid and Complete Electrochemical Reduction) soaks copper-bearing ore and mine waste in a vanadium-based solution that pulls the metal out in minutes at room temperature and pressure, then uses electricity to regenerate the solution - a trick borrowed from vanadium flow batteries. The result: up to 99% copper recovery with equipment that runs 70-90% cheaper than traditional smelters and produces no toxic emissions. Founded in 2022 by CEO Randy Allen and CTO Jon Vardner, the company raised $18.7M in seed funding in 2025 and is scaling toward pilot production of domestic, clean copper.
Surfe
Surfe is a connected revenue workspace that bridges LinkedIn and CRMs so sales teams can find, enrich, and sync prospect data without leaving their browser. Its browser extension and waterfall enrichment engine chain 15+ data providers to deliver verified emails and mobile numbers, and its buying-signal layer flags which prospects are ready to talk today. Founded in Paris in 2020 as Leadjet by David Maurice Chevalier and Romain Ginestou, the company rebranded to Surfe in 2022 alongside a EUR4M seed round, and now serves teams at companies like Google, Uber, Amazon Web Services, Spendesk, and Pigment.
Ranulfo Allen
Ranulfo (Randy) Allen is the co-founder and CEO of Still Bright, a New Jersey deep-tech startup using a vanadium-based electrochemical process to pull refined copper out of ore - and out of mine waste - at room temperature and pressure, no smelter required. A Princeton-trained chemical engineer with a Stanford PhD and a Dartmouth MBA, Allen spent years on the other side of the table as a venture investor and startup mentor before deciding to build the thing himself. Still Bright raised an $18.7M seed in 2025 led by Material Impact and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, betting that the looming copper shortage is solvable if you stop burning rock and start running electricity through it.
Steve Holm
Steve Holm is the CEO of Copper, a Google Workspace-native CRM serving professional services firms. One of Copper's founding team members - employee #4 - he spent five years helping grow the company from concept to $25M ARR before leaving to gain scale experience at Dropbox and Podium. He returned in August 2023 as a boomerang CEO to lead a product-focused turnaround, refocusing Copper on agencies, consulting firms, and relationship-centric businesses.
KoBold Metals
KoBold Metals is a Berkeley-based mineral exploration company that uses artificial intelligence, data science, and geophysics to find the copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel deposits the energy transition will require. Founded in 2018, it has raised roughly $1 billion from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, T. Rowe Price, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and is developing the Mingomba copper project in Zambia, called the country's largest copper discovery in a century.
Mariana Minerals
Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated critical minerals company building MarianaOS, an AI platform that turns mineral discovery, extraction and refining into a live, data-driven operation. The company is restarting and building lithium, copper and nickel projects across the U.S., starting with Copper One in Utah - billed as the world's first autonomy-first copper mine.
Kurt House
Kurt Zenz House is the Co-Founder and CEO of KoBold Metals, an AI-driven mineral exploration company backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Andreessen Horowitz. A Harvard-trained earth scientist and serial energy entrepreneur, he built KoBold from the ground up to solve one of the most consequential problems of the energy transition: finding enough copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel to power a decarbonized world. Under his leadership, the company discovered the Mingomba deposit in Zambia - potentially the most significant copper find in a century - and raised over $1 billion to develop it. Before KoBold, he founded C12 Energy (CO2-based enhanced oil recovery) and Phase Change Resources (natural gas asset acquisition), and held research and teaching roles at MIT and Stanford.
Turner Caldwell
Turner Caldwell is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mariana Minerals, a San Francisco-based startup rewriting the rulebook on how critical minerals are found, dug up, and refined. After nearly a decade ascending Tesla's battery supply chain from factory design to heading the metals and minerals team, Caldwell left to build Mariana in 2024. The company now operates Copper One in southeastern Utah - the world's first mine running autonomous haul trucks, robotic drills, and AI-driven refining under a single proprietary operating system called MarianaOS. Backed by a16z, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Khosla Ventures with $85M in Series A funding, Mariana targets 10 mineral projects in 10 years, compressing a timeline that traditionally stretches 15+ years for a single mine.