nickel
(6)
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.
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.
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.