“Innovation Crossroads” alum Nth Cycle announces $12.5 million Series A round
“Innovation Crossroads” alum Nth Cycle has announced the closing of its $12.5 million Series A financing round co-led by the investment arm of Frankstahl, one of the largest privately held steel distribution companies in Europe, and VoLo Earth, a Colorado-based venture firm focused on climate solutions.
The innovative metal processing and recycling technology company, co-founded by Megan O’Connor and now located to Boston, is disrupting the critical mineral supply chain necessary for electric vehicles, solar power, and energy storage through a groundbreaking recycling, mining and refining technology. Other investors in the financing round include global commodities powerhouse Mercuria, MassMutual through the MM Catalyst Fund, and previous investor Clean Energy Ventures.
Since the company’s initial seed financing in 2021, Nth Cycle has scaled its technology 100x and has already begun efforts to commercially deploy systems in 2022. The company expects to announce customer deals in the first quarter of this year. Nth Cycle has also doubled the size of its team and tripled the footprint of its Beverly, MA-based facilities. Due in large part to that growth and disruption of the space, the Nth Cycle team finished second at the “TechCrunch Disrupt” conference in 2021.
The company has engineered and developed an environmentally friendly process called electro-extraction that recovers critical minerals such as cobalt and nickel. The technology allows recyclers and miners to recover critical minerals from discarded batteries, low-grade ores, and mine site waste using only electricity and carbon filters. It should also be noted that electro-extraction is a cleaner, lower-cost alternative to the conventional, and prohibitively dirty pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy processes currently used by battery recyclers and mining companies. Nth Cycle’s technology expands the circular supply chain for the clean energy transition and can help disrupt China’s dominance in mining and refining of critical minerals.
“The energy transition will require supplies of critical minerals in North America that simply do not exist today in the market,” O’Connor said. “The world now knows it needs a more reliable critical mineral supply, but the heavy financial and environmental costs of achieving it have been a considerable barrier to success. Our technology removes these barriers and clears the path to an accelerated transition. We are thrilled to welcome this impressive group of investors and partners who share Nth Cycle’s vision for a domestic supply chain of critical minerals.”
As part of its public relations for the announcement, Nth Cycle posted this YouTube video.
