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1849 bio
Engineering microbes for miners to unlock billions in trapped metal
1849 bio designs microbes enabling cheap metal extraction allowing miners to unlock value from low quality copper and gold ores. Surprisingly, the mining industry is one of the largest scale users of biotech in the world with biomining processes accounting for ~1% of global copper production. Biomining is ultra-low cost, running around ~$1/ton of ore vs ~$7/ton for conventional processes. Unfortunately, while biomining is cheap, it can’t be applied to over 80% of copper ores, leaving vast resources without profitable extraction methods. An estimated ~$800B of copper sit today in waste materials and stockpiles with negative unit economics. While a great deal of effort has been spent on optimizing microbial metal extraction processes, very little effort has been spent on optimizing the microbes themselves. To change that, we’re creating new biotech tools and platforms applied directly to the types of biology most relevant to miners. This enables us to develop new microbes and tackle some of the most difficult problems in biomining, unlocking billions in value from unprofitable resources while being more environmentally friendly than conventional processes. We’re world class microbial engineers. We met while doing our PhDs in synthetic biology, where we spent our time applying and developing the most advanced bioengineering technologies to engineer living cells.
Aerogen Systems
Modernizing Chip Manufacturing Infrastructure
We are building the future of chip manufacturing. Chips are more advanced than ever, and the features inside them keep getting smaller. But the cleanroom infrastructure supporting their manufacture has not scaled at the same pace. Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and others spend billions building and operating massive cleanrooms, only to isolate their most advanced wafers from the surrounding facility as much as possible. We think that architecture is backwards. Instead of making the entire building cleaner, why not make the machinery itself as clean as possible? Talos is our proprietary tool-integrated purification system. It sits directly inside semiconductor equipment and continuously destroys airborne molecular contaminants before they reach the wafer. Instead of fighting contamination by constantly flooding tools with ultra-high-purity nitrogen, Talos keeps the environment inside the machine 10–100x cleaner, without the massive purge-gas bill. Talos is powerful on its own, but it is also the foundation for a much bigger vision: the Cleanpipe. The Aerogen Systems Cleanpipe is an ultra-clean interconnect infrastructure that protects wafers as they move from machine to machine across the fab. Rather than relying on a billion-dollar cleanroom to protect every cubic foot of factory space, Cleanpipe creates a controlled environment only where cleanliness actually matters: around the wafer. Talos cleans the tools. Cleanpipe connects them. Eventually, we delete the cleanroom and build more advanced chips, at greater scale, with radically less infrastructure. With cleanpipes connecting tools, chip fabs can exist anywhere.
Agency Tool Company
Reliable infrastructure to build, deploy and manage real-world robots.
Agency Tool Company ships software to robots in the field 20x faster than a Docker pull with ATC Deploy, sending only the bytes that changed and resuming when the network drops. Deployment tooling is the connection between the lab & the field that continually bottlenecks robotics scaling and lacks a strong robotics-native solution. Deploy is live today with 3 launch partners across ag, construction, and logistics robotics. Our second product, ATC Build, offers embedded-compute as a CI service so devs can run tests and validate their software on the actual target hardware. Build supports the Nvidia Jetson lineup, Raspberry Pi, and a number of other embedded platform targets. Jack Morrison and Davis Foster founded and sold Scythe Robotics after deploying hundreds of autonomous mowers across the country; Agency Tool Company is building the robotics deployment platform across hardware and software they wish they had. Learn more at https://agencytool.com
Airhart Aeronautics
Airplanes anyone can fly
Airhart is making airplanes anyone can fly. Our semi-autonomous tech will enable 10x more people to fly their own planes and make flying to Tahoe as easy as driving to the grocery store
Almond
A dual-arm robot built for physical AI.
We build robots for physical AI. Meet Axol - A dual-arm robot designed for real-world tasks using AI.
ALT TEX
Biodegradable and carbon neutral textiles, engineered from food waste.
ALT TEX is a Toronto-based biomaterials startup that has developed the world’s first biodegradable and carbon neutral fabric, engineered from the world’s largest landfill contributor - food waste. Polyester alone makes up 60% of the $2.5 trillion fashion industry and is the biggest blocker preventing brands from meeting sustainability mandates. The patent-pending ALT TEX fermentation technology creates a polyester alternative that works with the existing infrastructure to supply a sustainable, high performance and cost competitive polyester replacement to fashion brands, at scale. The product solves key problems for fashion brands, consumers, and the environment: (1) Fashion brands: ALT TEX sells fabric to fashion brands, allowing them to differentiate via sustainable options (sustainable fashion growing 11% CAGR) and hit sustainability targets, without sacrificing performance or changing their current supply chain. (2) Consumer: The ALT TEX fabric is projected to be half the price vs. other specialized sustainable alternatives (due to low-cost input and scalability), meaning greater accessibility. (3) Environment: A single shirt produced with ALT TEX fabric can divert 1 kg of food waste from landfills, 9 kg of carbon emissions from the air, and 4 g of micro-plastics from our waterways. Co-founders Myra and Avneet have worked together managing teams and projects for six years, with backgrounds in serial entrepreneurship, corporate sales at Fortune 500 companies, textile manufacturing and biochemistry. To date, ALT TEX has created their first fabric prototype that’s 70% stronger than cotton, secured $1M in LOIs and raised $2.3M.
Apolink
24/7 satellite connectivity in low Earth orbit
Apolink is a next-generation data relay network designed to provide real-time, low-latency connectivity for satellites in low Earth orbit. By enabling efficient data aggregation and relay through our hybrid RF-optical inter-satellite link (ISL) architecture, we support scalable and resilient space infrastructure across commercial, federal, and defense applications.
Applied Electrodynamics, Inc.
A new kind of camera that can see through walls.
Applied Electrodynamics builds imaging systems that see through solid matter. Our team previously co-invented the iPhone touchscreen and Nest learning thermostat. We’re starting in construction, helping teams map structural elements and utilities inside walls and ceilings. The same platform extends to security screening and cargo inspection. Our mission is to make the hidden physical world machine-readable across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Arc
aerial videography
aerial videography