Cyclic Materials' $27 million in Series A funding to help scale metals recycling technology
Cyclic Materials has raised $27 million in an oversubscribed Series A financing round. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP) and BMW i Ventures (BiV) and included participation from Fifth Wall, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada (BIC), and existing Cyclic Materials investor Planetary Technologies. This funding round brings the company's total capital raised to over $30 million and will contribute to the scale-up of its technologies.
Cyclic Materials is creating a domestic supply chain for rare earth elements (REEs) and other metals through a recycling process that recirculates REEs back into the manufacturing process, reducing the environmental impact of the global energy transition. REEs are critical to electrification and decarbonization as they are key components of electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and consumer and industrial appliances.
REEs are among the least recycled metals due to the difficulty of separating the various magnetic materials in end-of-life products. However, with the global market for REEs forecast to increase three-fold by 2030, establishing new sources of REEs is needed. REE and metal recycling have many economic and environmental benefits over mining such as a shorter development timeline, lower consumption of reagents and water, reduced waste, and a smaller carbon footprint. While new mines are also necessary to meet projected demand, developing a domestic supply chain of REEs reduces the need for virgin material. Through its proprietary technologies, Cyclic Materials can cost-efficiently recycle REEs from a diverse supply of end-of-life products.
In addition, Cyclic Materials' process recycles copper, aluminum, steel, cobalt, and nickel – metals that are also required for electrification and decarbonization. Electric vehicles, for example, require two and a half times as much copper as internal combustion vehicles. Beyond electric vehicles, copper is necessary for renewables, transmission and distribution infrastructure, and battery storage technologies.
Cyclic Materials has successfully developed pilot plants and distributed high-quality REE samples to prospective clients, secured supply chain agreements with internationally recognized companies, obtained Sustainable Development Technology Council of Canada funding, and received multiple industry awards.
"We are very excited about this new funding and our new partnerships with EIP, BiV, Fifth Wall, and BIC, which will provide the capital required for the scale-up of our technologies and help us plan our future growth in North America, Europe, and Asia," says Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and co-founder of Cyclic Materials. "With the support of our partners, we intend to continue advancing the scale of our technologies in order to meet the rising demand for rare earth elements in the near future and enable a more sustainable future."
"We are excited to back Ahmad and Cyclic Materials' mission to develop domestic, circular supply chains for REEs and other critical metals," says Shayle Kann, partner at EIP. "These metals are essential for electrification and recycling them has substantial economic and decarbonization benefits."
"REEs are critical for many applications from small electronics to large wind turbines but are very challenging to produce," says Kasper Sage, managing director of BiV. "The Cyclic Materials team has developed a novel process that can create a sustainable, secondary supply source. We are excited about the company's plan to scale this technology, helping secure the metals supply chain of the future."
