Aether recently announced a $49 million Series A led by Jay Zaveri at Natural Capital and Trevor Zimmerman at Unless to power the next industrial revolution by helping extract rare metals and create new materials, leading to a more resource-efficient and sustainable future. This funding round will be used to scale its platform and grow the company’s engineering, machine learning, and hardware teams.
Aether’s Molecular Assembler Platform combines high-throughput robotics, machine learning, and synthetic biology to map millions of enzyme-reaction combinations. And by generating unprecedented amounts of experimental data, the platform is able to engineer entirely new classes of nanoscale machines using protein building blocks called molecular assemblers. These molecular assemblers contain the power and sophistication of gigantic chemical factories, but on the scale of nanometers.
How does the platform create new materials? The assemblers can synthesize new products with greater strength, flexibility, and chemical resistance. And an example use case is in the defense industry, where Aether’s novel materials can dramatically increase the effectiveness and elasticity of ballistic materials, such as Kevlar-like products. Another example is combining the materials with industrial plastics like PEEK to improve processability, strength, and flexibility.
How does the platform extract metals? As Aether’s assemblers can be used to create new molecules, they can also be used to extract molecules, such as metals. To make this work, Aether’s molecular assemblers are introduced to a brine where they bond only to specified metal atoms, regardless of the concentration. From there, Aether programs these assemblers to release the element into a new solution, one that is now highly concentrated with atoms of the specified element and void of other contaminants and unwanted materials. The company’s initial emphasis is on lithium, with plans to extract additional metals in the future, such as rare earth metals, titanium, and other critical minerals.
Plus, Aether’s extraction process also eliminates the need for costly infrastructure that takes years to build, relying instead on portable, modular, shipping containers where the extraction and refinery occurs. With Aether, equipment can be deployed at unprecedented speeds while providing the unique ability to extract metals from previously inaccessible target metal reserves.
The world has enough lithium for meet increasing demand. But current mining and extraction practices impede access to these reserves. And as a result, the International Energy Agency warns of potential global lithium shortages by 2025, driven by the surging demand for lithium in renewable energy systems and electric vehicle batteries.
The current extraction techniques, including open-pit mining or evaporation ponds, require lithium concentration to be high enough for extraction to be commercially viable – while also requiring vast amounts of land and water.
By utilizing its molecular assemblers, Aether is able to extract lithium from previously untapped sources – increasing domestic production by 30x. And because this process takes place via a closed-loop system without the use of harsh chemicals, virtually any water used in the process can be safely returned to the source, requiring 50,000x less water than evaporative methods used in South America’s so-called Lithium Triangle.
Aether is going to initially focus its lithium extraction efforts in the southern, middle portions of the United States, including Oklahoma and Arkansas, where subterranean lithium exists in sizable amounts but at lower concentrations. Texas and Oklahoma will also be key areas of focus given the company’s unique ability to extract lithium from oil and gas wastewater byproducts, as well as capped oil wells.
KEY QUOTES:
“Nature invented nanoscale machinery called proteins that can move and rearrange atoms. At Aether, we’re engineering these proteins to go beyond what nature intended to assemble new classes of molecules, transforming proteins into generalized molecular assemblers. Applications range from critical mineral extraction to the assembly of novel classes of materials with unprecedented properties. In the long term, these assemblers will enable the construction of effectively any product at extremely low costs.”
— Pavle Jeremic, CEO and founder of Aether
“Aether’s revolutionary platform builds upon nature’s machinery to deliver solutions that are cheaper, faster, and greener than any current technology or process on the market. Current enzyme technologies are limited to catalyzing natural-like reactions while Aether’s enzyme application space is far greater – unlocking enzymatic pathways to high-value chemicals that don’t have a natural pathway. For example, lithium complexation.”
— Trevor Zimmerman, co-founder and managing partner at Unless
“Using machine learning with a real-time lab engine built into the training loop, Aether discovers novel enzymes and peptides that can functionally and effectively do many things – including the extraction of metals like lithium from brines and building flexible Kevlar-like material. Aether is the future of manufacturing where things that were not thought possible with chemical engineering are now possible through the engineering of new classes of enzymes that do specific work with lower energy needs, cleaner processes, and fast scalable systems.”
— Jay Zaveri, founder of Natural Capital and partner at Social Capital
