Recycling technology firm Nth Cycle Raises Fresh Funding of $12.5 million

Nth Cycle, the innovative metal processing and recycling technology company, has announced the closing of its $12.5 million Series A financing, 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. Nth Cycle is disrupting the critical mineral supply chain necessary for electric vehicles, solar power, and energy storage through what it terms a groundbreaking recycling, mining and refining technology. Other investors in the financing include global commodities powerhouse, Mercuria, MassMutual through the MM Catalyst Fund, and previous investor Clean Energy Ventures.

Nth Cycle has engineered and developed an environmentally friendly process called electro-extraction that recovers critical minerals such as cobalt and nickel. In less than twelve months, the company claims to have scaled its technology by 100x from bench-scale to a full commercial demonstration, which will be deployed by April 2022. Nth Cycle’s 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. 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,” said Megan O’Connor, Nth Cycle’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “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.”

“Nth Cycle is disrupting the mining and recycling industry to solve one of the most daunting obstacles to the energy and transportation transition,” said Joseph Goodman, Managing Partner and co-founder at VoLo Earth. “There is simply no way we will achieve the urgent goals of electrification and decarbonization without widespread deployment of technologies like Nth Cycle’s to improve the economics and environmental impact of how we extract critical minerals. What’s more, this revolutionary technology will almost certainly have a significant economic impact in creating a domestic critical minerals supply chain.”

“The world is on the precipice of a generational disruption in how we create, transmit and store energy and how we power transportation. Battery storage, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and other tools of this transformation are already seeing record growth and investment. Still, global mineral supplies cannot keep up with that demand,” said Boris Bystrov of Mercuria. “Nth Cycle offers a unique solution in ensuring unfettered access to a safe, equitable, and clean supply of cobalt, nickel, and other critical minerals that fuel this transformation.”

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. The company 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.

Funds from this financing will be used to deploy the first commercial units at recycling facilities in 2022, as well as to expand Nth Cycle’s technical and development staff in 2022.