sustainable-mining
(8)
BANIQL
BANIQL is a Santa Clara / San Jose-based climate-tech startup building a low-acid, low-energy chemical process to extract nickel and cobalt from laterite ore for lithium-ion batteries. Its patented method runs at atmospheric pressure and lower temperatures, cutting energy use and CO2 emissions by roughly 80%, lowering costs by about 30% versus conventional high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL), and generating virtually zero waste. Founded in 2021, the company runs R&D and pilot production in the U.S. and ton-scale prototype production in Indonesia, targeting the EV and battery-materials supply chain.
Electroflow Technologies
Electroflow Technologies is a San Bruno, California startup building an electrochemical direct lithium extraction (DLE) process that turns low-grade, dilute North American brines into battery-grade lithium and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) powder. By collapsing a conventional 10-step brine-to-LFP process down to three steps and using lithium-selective electrodes, the company aims to produce LFP cathode material domestically at under $2,500 per metric ton - roughly 40% below current Chinese producers - while using minimal water, chemicals, and electricity.
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.
Tidal Metals
Tidal Metals is a Trenton/Hamilton, New Jersey deep-tech company that extracts primary magnesium metal from seawater and desalination brine using nothing but renewable electricity and physical processes - no ore mining, no carbon emissions, and no waste stream. Founded by three plasma-physics PhDs who met at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the company aims to rebuild a domestic U.S. magnesium supply chain currently dominated by China, serving aerospace, defense, and next-generation automotive manufacturing.
Eric Januar
Eric Januar is a co-founder and CEO of BANIQL, a Silicon Valley deep-tech startup reinventing how the world pulls nickel and cobalt out of the ground for electric-vehicle batteries. With 12 years in electronics, battery and semiconductor R&D - including a stint at Merck and a prior startup exit - he helped build BEST (the Baniql Extraction SysTem), a low-temperature, low-pressure process that the company says cuts electricity use by roughly 98 percent and reaches 99.7 percent nickel sulfate purity with net-zero toxic waste. BANIQL closed a US$1.6M seed round in 2024 and completed a 100 kg/month pre-pilot plant by year-end.
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.
Willy Halim
Willy Halim is a chemical engineer and the founder of BANIQL, a San Jose climate-tech startup he started in his backyard in 2021 to refine nickel and cobalt without the heat, pressure, and toxic waste of conventional mining. Trained at UC Berkeley and Cornell and seasoned as a battery engineer in Silicon Valley, he built a low-temperature, atmospheric-pressure chemical process that BANIQL says uses about 80% less energy than industry-standard high-pressure acid leaching, produces net-zero toxic waste, and turns leftovers into fertilizer and construction material. The company raised a $1.6M seed round led by BEENEXT in 2024 and added 500 Global and Genesia Ventures in 2025, aiming first at Indonesia, which holds roughly a quarter of the world's nickel.
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.