Unlocking critical minerals from low-grade resources with biomining.

Nearly all cobalt is a by-product of copper and nickel mining, and what isn’t recovered is left behind in process solutions and tailings. Modeled estimates put the cobalt discarded at U.S. metal mines at roughly what the country imports each year. Our engineered microbes recover it.

Cobalt and nickel sit side by side in laterite ores, which hold more than half of the world’s nickel, and they are notoriously hard to separate. Our microbes are engineered to pick out cobalt from nickel, so a single waste stream can yield both metals.

Pulling one rare earth away from its chemical look-alikes is the hardest and most China-dominated step in making magnets. We’re engineering microbes to separate neodymium from lanthanum and dysprosium, so mixed rare earth streams can become separated, magnet-ready oxides.