In-Q-Tel invests in rare earth mineral extraction startup
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By
Ross Wilkers
China’s domination of global supply chains for these key tech ingredients helps explain why the intelligence community's venture investment arm is backing Alta Resource Technologies.
Alta Resource Technologies, a two-year-old startup that uses biochemistry techniques to extract rare earth minerals, has expand its Series Seed funding capture amount to $10 million with the close of an additional $4.4 million investment.
The company designed its flagship platform to use engineered, customized proteins in its work to select and separate the minerals from sources such as waste streams and ores. Makers of electronics, defense systems, clean energy and other types of advanced technology systems rely on these minerals.
In-Q-Tel, the intelligence community’s venture capital arm, is one of the participants in the $4.4 million extension announced Monday. DCVC and Voyager Ventures led the round, which also included Orion Industrial Ventures as a participant.
China’s domination of rare earth mineral supply chains helps explain why In-Q-Tel is interested in the technology and technique Alta specializes in. Gallium, germanium and antimony are examples of metals that go into computer chips and munitions.
In March, President Trump signed an executive order to prioritize these minerals as a national security imperative and work to boost domestic production of them.
“Alta’s protein-based platform demonstrates the promise of engineering biology to address significant national security challenges,” Dr. Jessica Dymond, vice president of technology at In-Q-Tel, said in a release. “We are excited about supporting Alta’s technological innovation to diversify the nation’s sources of critical minerals and advance domestic processing capabilities.”
Boulder, Colorado-headquartered Alta will use the new capital to hire more people for its technical team, advance commercial pilots and find additional sources of the minerals.
“Biology has solved the problem of ultra-selective mineral separation over billions of years, but translating that into practical applications has been elusive – until now,” Alta’s co-founder and chief executive Nathan Ratledge said in the release.
Alta worked with researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Penn State University to develop its platform with low environmental impact in mind.