Startup's Probiotic Tech Could Boost Copper Supply 30%

The world is running toward a copper crisis, but tiny microbes might just save the day.

By 2040, global copper demand could outstrip supply by 25%, threatening everything from electric cars to the data centers powering our digital lives. While mining giants scramble to find new deposits, one startup thinks the answer lies in making existing mines work harder.

Transition Metal Solutions just raised $6 million to scale up its surprisingly simple solution. Instead of digging deeper or wider, the company feeds naturally occurring microbes in copper mines a special cocktail of nutrients, like probiotics for ore heaps.

The results speak for themselves. In lab tests, the treatment extracted 90% of copper from ore samples, up from the usual 60%. Even accounting for real world conditions, founder Sasha Milshteyn expects mines to jump from extracting 30% to 60% of available copper to pulling out 50% to 70% or more.

For decades, mining companies tried a different approach. They'd isolate promising microbe strains, grow them in labs, and dump them onto ore piles. The strategy flopped because microbes don't work alone. They live in complex communities where different species support each other.

Transition takes a smarter path. The company studied the entire microbial ecosystem inside copper mines and discovered that over 90% of the species there had never been seen before. Scientists had only been working with the tiny fraction that could survive in lab conditions.

Rather than betting on a few star performers, Transition nurtures the whole community. Their proprietary blend of mostly inorganic compounds, already found at mining sites, nudges all the microbes toward peak performance together.

Each mine hosts a different microbial population, so Transition plans to customize treatments based on initial testing. As they gather more data, they expect to predict what each mine needs before even arriving.

The Ripple Effect

This breakthrough could solve the copper shortage before it starts, without the environmental cost of opening new mines. We're already leaving behind 65% of available copper in typical mining operations, essentially wasting what we've already dug up.

The timing couldn't be better. As the world races toward renewable energy and electric transportation, copper demand keeps climbing. Finding ways to extract more from existing operations means less habitat destruction and fewer new mining sites carved into pristine landscapes.

Next, Transition will prove its technology at a third party metallurgy lab trusted by the mining industry. Then comes a demonstration on tens of thousands of tons of actual ore. Success there opens the door to deployment at copper mines worldwide.

Sometimes the biggest solutions come from the smallest helpers.