Giraffe Bio develops mineral-specific chemicals to help mines recover up to 5% more copper. The company grows engineered microbes in a bioreactor to produce the compounds, which are inserted into a mine’s existing process rather than introducing living microbes into mining conditions.
The approach comes as copper demand rises with AI data centers and economywide electrification. By 2040, supply could fall 25% short of demand. Mining companies mostly boost production by opening new mines, a costly, luck-driven endeavor: typically, only 0.3% of prospective mines pan out.
A new wave of critical-minerals startups has been working on ways to get more copper from existing mines using biotechnology, mostly through heap leaching, where microbes help separate minerals from waste. Endolith has created what it calls “Olympic caliber” microbes, Ceibo is developing its own strains, and Transition Metal Solutions has made prebiotics to encourage microbial activity.
Giraffe Bio’s method differs from applying bacteria directly to ore that are thought to aid copper extraction. Instead, engineered microbes make custom chemicals in a bioreactor. This approach uses biological machinery without requiring microbes to stay alive in mining environments, which co-founder and CEO Alejandro Buffo Sempé told TechCrunch is “very complicated.”
The company says it can extract more copper because it can engineer compounds specific to each mine’s mineral content. In mining, Buffo Sempé told TechCrunch, an extra 5% copper recovery “is really very material”; he said most would be happy with a gain of 1% to 2%.
Giraffe Bio’s compounds go into the flotation process, where chemicals help minerals float or sink in a bath of water. Operators skim the desirable minerals off the top. The tighter the chemicals bind to the minerals of interest, the more can be recovered. “We are extremely good at only picking up the copper,” Buffo Sempé said.
Mines also use chemicals called depressors, which bind to unwanted compounds, including arsenic, and sink them out of the mix so more desirable products remain at the top. The CEO said Giraffe Bio is using the same biotech platform to develop depressors.
In addition to improving mine production, Giraffe Bio says it can supplant toxic chemicals used in flotation. Buffo Sempé said, “Instead of pouring chemicals that are usually very harmful for the environment and so forth, we’re replacing the function that they are providing to the flotation process with a biomolecule.” Buffo Sempé added, “We’re minimizing the friction towards maximizing the output.”
Giraffe Bio is initially focusing on copper, though it says the platform can be adapted to other minerals. “The beauty of this is that we can target copper or we can target gold or silver,” Buffo Sempé said.
TechCrunch has exclusively learned that Giraffe Bio raised a $6.4 million seed round led by Orion Industrial Ventures, with participation from BHP Ventures, Twynam, Air Capital, and Baruch Future Ventures. The next test is whether the claimed recovery gains hold up in working mine operations.
