Howard Yuh

Howard Yuh is a plasma physicist turned founder who is trying to break China's grip on magnesium by pulling the metal out of the ocean. As CEO and cofounder of Tidal Metals, the New Jersey deeptech he spun out of his earlier desalination venture GreenBlu, he uses an adsorption temperature-swing vapor pump - a trick borrowed from fusion research - to extract magnesium salt from seawater with only electricity, no mining, and no waste. The company raised $8.5M in seed funding led by DCVC in 2024 and won the World Economic Forum's Sustainable Mining Challenge the same year.