How one startup is using prebiotics to try and ease the copper shortage

Five years from now, the world might start running short on copper, the critical mineral used in everything from data centers to electric vehicles. Absent any changes, the world could face a severe shortfall as early as 2040, with demand exceeding supply by as much as 25%. 

If copper seems expensive today, just wait a few years.

Companies and investors have been pouring money into the sector as demand ramps up. AI minerals startup KoBold, for example, raised $537 million last year to exploit a copper deposit it found in Zambia.

But with a little help from some microbes, today’s copper producers might be able to beat the shortage. One startup, Transition Metal Solutions, says it has found a way to boost copper production by 20% to 30% using additives to boost the microbes’ performance. Think of it as prebiotics for copper mines.

To scale up its technology, Transition Metal Solutions has raised a $6 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by Transition Ventures with participation from Astor Management AG, Climate Capital, Dolby Family Ventures, Essential Capital, Juniper VC, Kayak Ventures, New Climate Ventures, Possible Ventures, SOSV, and Understorey Ventures.

Microbes have always been key players in the copper world, helping the metal break out of its mineral form so that we can refine it into pure metal. Companies have been working for years to coax microbes into squeezing more copper out of ore, but according to Sasha Milshteyn, co-founder and CEO of Transition, they’ve been going about it the wrong way.

Typically, companies isolate or engineer strains that show promise in boosting copper production. They grow large quantities of them and pour them over an ore heap, where the microbes soak in and get to work.

“That by and large hasn’t paid off,” Milshteyn told TechCrunch. “Often they will see kind of a boost early on and then it just kind of falls off — or they don’t see any boost at all.”

Milshteyn suspects that part of the problem is that microbes aren’t solo actors. It’s like casting a star without a supporting cast. Microbes live in diverse communities where each plays a role. Bumping up the population of one strain can only do so much.

Another part of the problem is that we’ve only scratched the surface on understanding microbes in ore heaps. “When you look into the microbial community that’s present in the material, typically well over 90% of it are things that we’ve never seen before,” Milshteyn said.

Conditions inside a heap leach, as the acid-laced piles of ore are called, are challenging to replicate in a lab. The pH is low, around 2, and there are clays and other metals floating around, all of which undermine the usual molecular tools scientists use to understand microbial communities.

“Everything that the industry has done has really focused on that tiny fraction that people have been able to grow in the lab,” he said. “Typically, it’s in the 5% range that you can culture.”

So instead of trying to isolate a few star performers, Transition is working to raise the entire community up. The company applies low-cost, mostly inorganic compounds that are already found at mining sites.

“What we’re focused on is not necessarily boosting one or two species, but we’re trying to nudge the community towards the higher functional state,” he said. “We’ve observed that in the lab.”

In lab samples that Transition has applied its proprietary cocktail to, the startup has been able to extract 90% of the copper from the ore, up from 60% using traditional methods. 

Outside of the lab, Milshteyn expects the efficacy to drop a bit, though not by much. Traditional heap leaches extract around 30% to 60% of the copper in the ore. He thinks Transition can bring that up to at least 50% to 70%, maybe higher. 

Each mine has a different microbial community, so Transition plans to tailor its additives based on initial testing. As the company gathers more data, Milshteyn thinks that eventually he and his team will be able to predict what a mine needs in advance.

At that rate, the company’s prebiotics could solve the copper shortage before it starts. But first, Transition has to show the mining industry that its solution works. The company plans to work with a third-party metallurgy lab that’s known within the mining world. “Without third party results, nobody’s going to believe you,” Milshteyn said. Money from the seed round should cover that phase of testing.

After Transition has proven it works in the lab, then it’ll apply its treatment to a demonstration heap containing tens of thousands of tons of material. With luck, it’ll then deploy its technology at copper mines around the world.

“We’re leaving 65% of material behind” at typical mines, Milshteyn said. “We may as well get as much out of it as we can.”

Update: The article previously referred to Transition’s additives as probiotics instead of prebiotics.