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Mining waste is converted by a startup into vital metals for the US

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A metal transition lies at the core of the energy transition. Compared to their gas-powered counterparts, wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars require a lot more copper, zinc, and nickel. Additionally, they need additional rare earth elements—exotic metals with special qualities—which are necessary for the magnets used in devices like EV motors and wind turbines.

China now controls the majority of rare earth element processing, purifying around 60% of the world’s supply. The Biden administration has stated that the scenario presents challenges to national and economic security, as demand for these minerals is expected to soar.

In the United States and many other countries, large amounts of rare earth metals are currently sitting untapped. The problem is that they are combined with a ton of hazardous mining waste.

Phoenix Tailings is expanding a method for extracting elements from mining waste, such as nickel and rare earth metals. After collecting oxidized metal with water and recyclable solvents, the company heats a mixture of molten salt and applies electricity to the metal.

Co-founded by MIT alums, the business claims that its pilot production plant in Woburn, Massachusetts, is the only location in the world that produces rare earth metals without emitting carbon dioxide or hazardous byproducts. Phoenix Tailings now uses renewable energy contracts to offset the electricity used in the process.

By 2026, the company anticipates producing over 3,000 tons of the metals, which would have accounted for almost 7% of all U.S. output in the previous year.

Phoenix Tailings is now increasing the range of metals it can manufacture and moving forward with plans to construct a second manufacturing plant with help from the Department of Energy.

According to the founding team, which consists of Nick Myers, Anthony Balladon, and MIT graduates Tomás Villalón ’14 and Michelle Chao ’14, the work has global and geopolitical ramifications.

“Being able to make your own materials domestically means that you’re not at the behest of a foreign monopoly,” Villalón explains. “We’re focused on creating critical materials for the next generation of technologies. More broadly, we want to get these materials in ways that are sustainable in the long term.”

Addressing a worldwide issue

After enrolling in Course 3.091 (Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry) during his first year at MIT, Villalón developed an interest in chemistry and materials science. He had the opportunity to work at Boston Metal, another MIT startup that decarbonizes steel production on a large scale using an electrochemical technique, during his senior year. Villalón, a materials science and engineering major, began considering developing more environmentally friendly metallurgical techniques as a result of the event.

But Villalón didn’t take action until he happened to meet Myers at a Bible study in 2018.

When the subject of electricity came up, “We were discussing some of the major problems in the world when we came to the topic of electrification,” Villalón remembers. It turned into a debate about how the United States obtains its materials and how we ought to consider electrifying their manufacturing. After ten years of working there, I eventually thought, “Let’s go do something about it.” Nick concurred, but I assumed he was merely trying to boost his self-esteem. Then, in July, he called me at random and said, ‘I’ve got [$7,000]. When do we start?’”

The founders began testing novel methods for making rare earth metals after Villalón brought in Chao, a former MIT classmate and fellow materials science and engineering major, and Myers brought in Balladon, a former coworker.

According to Villalón, “We went back to the base principles, the thermodynamics I learned with MIT professors Antoine Allanore and Donald Sadoway, and understanding the kinetics of reactions,”  “Classes like Course 3.022 (Microstructural Evolution in Materials) and 3.07 (Introduction to Ceramics) were also really useful. I touched on every aspect I studied at MIT.”

The founders also participated in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program and were mentored by MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS). Sadoway advised the business.

The inventors constructed a prototype reactor in Villalón’s backyard after creating a preliminary version of their system design and purchasing an experimental amount of red sludge, a mining waste. In the end, the founders had a modest amount of product, but they had to quickly borrow the scientific tools necessary to identify it. It turned out to be pure iron and a trace amount of rare earth concentrate.

Today, Phoenix Tailings warms its combination to about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit at its refinery in Woburn, where it incorporates mining waste that is rich in rare earth metals. Pure metal gathers on an electrode when an electric current is applied to the mixture. There is not much garbage left over after the operation.

Because rare earths require extremely high purities in comparison to metals manufactured traditionally, Villalón says, “the key for all of this isn’t just the chemistry, but how everything is linked together.” “As a result, you have to be thinking about the purity of your material the entire way through.”

Rare earths, nickel, magnesium, and other elements

When using renewable energy sources to generate power, Villalón claims the process is 100% carbon free, creates no harmful byproducts, and is cost-effective when compared to traditional manufacturing methods.

Neodymium and dysprosium, two rare earth elements crucial to magnets, are now produced for clients at the Woburn site. Consumers are utilizing the materials for defense applications, electric vehicles, and wind turbines.

Additionally, the business has been awarded two grants totaling over $2 million under the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program. Its 2023 award funds the creation of a technology that employs carbonization and recycled carbon dioxide to extract nickel and magnesium from mining waste. Magnesium and nickel are both essential components for clean energy devices like batteries.

The company will use the most recent funding to modify its method so that it can generate iron from mining waste without emitting any harmful byproducts or emissions. Phoenix Tailings claims that it has an abundance of material to work with and that their technique is suitable with a broad range of ore types and waste materials: About 1.8 billion tons of garbage are produced annually in the United States as a result of the mining and processing of mineral ores.

Villalón says, “We want to take our knowledge from processing the rare earth metals and slowly move it into other segments,”  Here, “We simply have to refine some of these materials here. There’s no way we can’t. So, what does that look like from a regulatory perspective? How do we create approaches that are economical and environmentally compliant not just now, but 30 years from now?”

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Amazon Invests an additional $4 Billion in the AI Firm Anthropic

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As the e-commerce behemoth competes with Big Tech rivals to profit from generative artificial intelligence technology, Amazon.com (AMZN.O.) opened a new tab and invested an additional $4 billion in OpenAI opponent Anthropic.

Amazon’s stake in the company famed for its GenAI chatbot Claude has doubled, but it is still a minority investor, the business announced on Friday. Like Amazon’s prior $4 billion investment, it is made in installments, starting at $1.3 billion and taking the form of convertible notes.

According to sources who asked not to be named in order to discuss private topics, Anthropic is also in discussions with other investors in order to raise more money with Amazon’s support.

Amazon, which has steadily become Anthropic’s main cloud partner, is in intense competition with Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) to provide AI-powered tools for its cloud clients. As a major distributor of its most recent models, AWS is generating a substantial amount of revenue for Anthropic.

“The investment in Anthropic is essential for Amazon to stay in a leadership position in AI,” Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, stated.

The increased investment by the e-commerce giant in Anthropic highlights the billions of dollars that have been invested in AI startups in the past year as investors seek to profit from the technology’s surge in popularity following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.

Last month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI collected $6.6 billion from investors, potentially valuing the company at $157 billion and solidifying its place among the world’s most valuable private enterprises.

Anthropic intends to use Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and implement its core models. Securing expensive AI chips is a big concern for startups since the rigorous process of training AI models demands powerful processors.

“It (partnership) also allows Amazon to promote its AI services such as leveraging its AI chips for training and inferencing, which Anthropic is using,” Luria stated.

Amazon is one of the many so-called hyperscaler clients of Nvidia (NVDA.O), which opens a new tab and presently controls the market for AI chips.

However, through its Annapurna Labs branch, which Anthropic stated it was “working closely with” to help create CPUs, Amazon has been striving to develop its own chips. Additionally, Amazon has been working on developing its own AI model, code-named “Olympus,” which it has not yet made public.

Anthropic, which was co-founded by brothers Dario and Daniela Amodei, former executives at OpenAI, said last year that it had obtained a $500 million investment from Alphabet, which pledged to contribute an additional $1.5 billion over time.

The startup’s operations also make advantage of Alphabet’s Google Cloud capabilities.

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Wiz will pay $450 million to acquire Cloud Remediation Startup Dazz

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Wiz revealed on Thursday that it will buy channel-focused company Dazz in an agreement to add cloud remediation capabilities to the vendor’s cloud and AI security platform.

With features like application security posture management and continuous threat and exposure management, Dazz provides a remediation-focused cloud security platform.

Jared Phipps, a seasoned cybersecurity industry executive who most recently worked for SentinelOne, was hired by Dazz in February as its CRO as the business sought to expand its collaboration with channel partners. Presidio, situated in New York, has been one of the key partners.

Dazz said in July that it has raised a $50 million round of funding, increasing its total funding since its 2021 launch to $110 million.

Dazz provides a “industry-leading remediation engine,” according to a post published on Thursday by Wiz Co-Founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, which will allow Wiz to “empower security teams to correlate data from multiple sources and manage application risks in one unified platform.”

This is Wiz’s third purchase overall and its second acquisition of 2024 after the company’s April acquisition of cloud detection and response provider Gem Security.

Wiz, a four-year-old startup, reported in May that it had raised $1 billion in new capital at a $12 billion valuation, citing its continued strong development in the cloud and AI security areas. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) for the business reportedly increased from $350 million earlier this year to above $500 million.

After making a number of management additions aimed at facilitating quicker partner-driven growth, Rappaport stated in February that Wiz would prioritize its channel operations moving ahead.

I“In cybersecurity partners are super, super important in the success of a company. So we’ve always [seen that] this has huge potential for us to tap into. I think there is so much more we can do,” he stated at the time.

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ProRata, an AI startup, Teams up with UK Publishers after reportedly Hitting $130 Million in Valuation

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A number of well-known British media outlets have joined ProRata, an AI firm that claims to compensate publishers for the usage of their work, in its expanding network of partnerships.

The Los Angeles-based firm announced on Wednesday that it has signed licensing deals with publishers such as Sky News, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail’s publisher, DMG Media.

In a recent Series A funding round, ProRata raised $25 million from investors such as the Mayfield Fund, Prime Movers Lab, and Revolution Ventures.

“ProRata’s founder and CEO Bill Gross said his firm’s AI technology is the only one that pledges to credit and compensate creators, while providing users with accurate search results.

“We have had hundreds of content owners and media companies reach out to us from around the world who are interested in piloting our technology. Stealing and scraping content is not a sustainable path forward,” he continued.

Similar alliances have previously been formed by ProRata with the German publisher Axel Springer, the Atlantic, Fortune, Time, and Universal Music Group (UMG).

Media firms are offered reasonable compensation by ProRata for the use of their content. The startup’s in-house technology may determine the proper amount of pay by evaluating the worth of the information used to create responses from an AI platform. This would make it possible to pay copyright holders for their work on a per-use basis.

Gross had previously said that AI platforms have been using “shoplifted, plagiarized content,” which fosters an atmosphere in which “disinformation thrives and creators get nothing.”

Gross is recognized for having created the pay-per-click model of internet search monetization with his business, GoTo.com, which was eventually acquired by Yahoo! in 2003.

In a recent blog post, Tige Savage, a cofounder of Revolution, stated that Bill Gross is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in monetization techniques.

“He’s attracted a world-class tech team led by AI luminary Tarek Najm to implement the vision and an accomplished business team, including Annelies Jansen and Jonas Lee to drive content and AI partnerships,” Savage continued.

The unpaid use of copyrighted materials by OpenAI and other tech companies to train their AI systems has led to litigation from media companies and other content creators.

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