Between the AI data center boom and economywide electrification, the world will need a lot more copper. By 2040, copper supplies could fall 25% short of demand.
That’ll be a tall order for the mining industry, which boosts production mostly by opening new mines, which is a costly, luck-driven endeavor. Typically, just 0.3% of prospective mines pan out.
A new wave of critical minerals startups have been working on new ways to squeeze more copper out of existing mines using biotechnology, mostly by focusing on heap leaches, where microbes help separate minerals from waste. Endolith has created “Olympic caliber” microbes, Ceibo is working on its own strains, and Transition Metal Solutions has developed prebiotics to boost microbial activity.
Giraffe Bio is taking an alternative approach. The startup develops mineral-specific chemicals to help mines recover up to 5% more copper. In mining, that amount “is really very material,” Alejandro Buffo Sempé, co-founder and CEO of Giraffe Bio, told TechCrunch. Most would be happy with an additional 1% to 2%.
The startup says it can extract more copper because it’s able to engineer compounds specific to each mine’s mineral content.
To bring the technology out of the lab, Giraffe Bio recently raised a $6.4 million seed round led by Orion Industrial Ventures, with participation from BHP Ventures, Twynam, Air Capital, and Baruch Future Ventures, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Rather than douse ores with bacteria thought to facilitate copper extraction, the company grows engineered microbes in a bioreactor to produce the bespoke compounds. Those chemicals are then inserted into a mine’s existing process.
“We can leverage all of the biological machinery without having to deal with keeping alive a microbe, which is very complicated in [mining] environments,” Buffo Sempé said.
The startup is beginning with copper, but it says its platform can be tailored to other minerals, too. “The beauty of this is that we can target copper or we can target gold or silver,” he said.
The startup’s compounds are used in a mine’s flotation process. In flotation, chemicals help minerals either float or sink in a bath of water, allowing the operators to skim the desirable minerals off the top. The tighter the chemicals bind to the minerals of interest, the more that can be recovered. “We are extremely good at only picking up the copper,” Buffo Sempé said.
Mines also use chemicals called depressors, which bind to unwanted compounds like arsenic and sink them out of the mix, leaving more desirable products at the top. Giraffe Bio is using the same biotech platform to develop depressors as well, the CEO said.
In addition to improving mine production, Giraffe Bio can supplant toxic chemicals in the flotation process, too.
“Instead of pouring chemicals that are usually very harmful for the environment and so forth, we’re replacing the function that they are providing to the flotation process with a biomolecule,” Buffo Sempé said. “We’re minimizing the friction towards maximizing the output.”
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Tim De Chant is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was founding editor.
De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, and he was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA degree in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.
You can contact or verify outreach from Tim by emailing [email protected].