'In the transition to clean energy, critical minerals bring new challenges to energy security.'
The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, IEA, 2022
Why now?
Critical minerals and Rare Earth Elements are now at the forefront of global energy and economic policy agendas. Recent analyses of the full value chain from mining to separation, processing, and alloying, has highlighted vulnerabilities across global supply chains, and prioritized the national security implications of supply chain disruptions amidst the ongoing geopolitical stalemate.
The real issue isn’t geology - it’s processing, separation, and time to market. That gap is exactly where the opportunity exists.
The Opportunity
By combining synthetic biology, materials science, and AI-driven process design, we enable the recovery of critical minerals from complex, low-grade, and waste-derived sources — building a more secure and sustainable supply chain for national security and the energy transition.
Our platform
At Cinderae Nova, we're reinventing the economics of critical mineral separation through AI-engineered synthetic biology
Cinderae Nova’s platform combines in silico-designed ligands with scalable ceramic membrane architectures to deliver tunable lanthanide and critical element selectivity at industrially deployable scale.
Climate Mitigation Technology
By 2040, demand for rare earth elements is projected to increase by 700%. Today, one country controls over 85% of global processing capacity.
The clean energy transition runs on critical minerals. Every wind turbine, EV drivetrain, and grid-scale battery depends on critical minerals - especially rare earth elements - that today's supply chains cannot reliably deliver. Cinderae Nova makes domestic, low-cost REE supply a reality.
National Security & Defense
A single F-35 fighter jet requires more than 900 pounds of rare earth materials. None of it is currently sourced domestically from start to finish.
Modern defense systems — from precision munitions to next-generation aircraft — are built on rare earth elements processed almost entirely abroad. Cinderae Nova delivers the domestic separation capability the defense industrial base needs.
Electronics Industries
A smartphone contains up to 16 critical minerals. A data center, thousands of times more. Almost none are processed domestically.
Semiconductors, data centers, and advanced computing hardware all depend on critical minerals vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. As demand accelerates with AI and electrification, Cinderae Nova provides the supply chain resilience the electronics industry can't afford to be without.
Who we serve
From offshore wind to guided munitions, the technologies that define our future run on critical minerals. At Cinderae Nova, we make domestic sourcing viable.