The Exchanges, every show

Q Um, let's talk about end life. So jumping in, give us the sort of overview. What exactly is the problem that you're trying to solve, and how are you solving it?

A The world does not have a copper discovery problem. We have a copper recovery problem. So the fact is we need so much more copper in the next 2030, 40 years, and we found a lot of this copper sometimes decades ago, sometimes hundreds of years ago, but Current technology can't get it out economically. It's very complex. There's low permeability. We can talk about how heap leaches work, but new mines take 10 to 15 years to permit and build, and those clocks between needing the copper today and new mines, they just, they do not align. The answer does not work there. So at Endolith, we use microbes and data to pull more copper out of material that's already been mined at operations that already exist. The microbes aren't new. They've been breaking down rock for billions of years, and this enables us to really equip and turn these heap leeches into a precision tool to get more and more copper out and bring it to market today.

AI assessment note: “we use microbes and data to pull more copper out of material that's already”

Q Right. And so I think this leads to you essentially answering this question, but, but I guess I was getting at kind of, like, why haven't they done some of these things on their own? Like, are they using any microbial approaches? Is there a reason that they That they shy away from this kind of innovation? Like, why?

A Yeah, so there's two parts there, and it's, it's partially because the downside is asymmetric, and honestly, if I ran a mine, I would be worried about that, too. These heap leaches that we're talking about, they are multi-billion dollar assets that have to run every day, so if an external party's innovation adds two points of recovery, that's nice, but if it disrupts the heap, Someone's quarter is destroyed. Someone's career might go with it because they're not hitting their milestones, and so the internal incentive structure for major rewards is typically saying no to startups and thinking about building internal versions which may or may not work. Um, I don't fight that logic. Like, that's not something that we're coming up here to disrupt, but we really want to work with it and design around it. So everything we do is really structured so that the customer has minimal downside. It's fully plug and play. And then the conservative move ultimately becomes, why wouldn't we bring this new technology in?

AI assessment note: “it's partially because the downside is asymmetric”

Q is that critical materials is one of actually the bright spots, particularly in sort of the climate energy conversation, that there's still a focus and still a recognition by this administration that that's something that we need to work on. So is that, is that your feeling? Like, do you, do you, are you feeling the love from the federal, like, Funding and sort of regulatory context, or not necessarily?

A Not yet. We have to find a giant pile of government money that magically helps us. But that said, I think there's a lot of real momentum here, and it's great. The structural logic at the end of the day is going to hold regardless of who's in office, because you can't electrify anything. You can't build AI data centers without copper, and much of the world's current refining and processing capacity sits outside the US. So The recovery argument is pretty simple. You can add domestic supply without new permitting, which makes it the fastest lever that the country has. The incentives, as they continue to emerge and evolve, I really look forward to that, but at the end of the day, the unit economics have to clear, and it has to make financial sense for mining customers.

AI assessment note: “Not yet. We have to find a giant pile of government money that magically helps us.”

Q Mm-hmm. Okay, and so I think a lot of folks in your position, again, particularly if you're facing sort of a big legacy industry, work as hard as they can to get corporate venture, particularly that's aligned with your industry, on the cap table as quickly as possible. But you all have not done that, so say more. No. About why not?

A We, not having CVCs on our cap table has been a deliberate structural choice. We work closely with a lot of the large mining companies. We publicly are working with BHP and Rio Tinto, and from my side, I would much rather have them as customers than as investors that could potentially have a finger on the scale of what gets built. Those to me are different relationships, and when you start to blur them, it can be at your own cost. If a strategic investor is also your customer, then every roadmap conversation sometimes can have a second agenda. You have to be very careful about if you're sharing information with other customers, and we went in eyes wide open. We have some advisors who have sat on corporate venture arms and public boards, and one of the universal themes was to preserve our optionality. Our customers should be our customers, and our investors should be our investors. Getting the technology to win for everyone is the most important bit, and it's, it's a somewhat orthogonal take. Most mining startups go the other reason, the other direction, mostly for good reasons. Um, for us, it really comes down to focus, and we've had the optionality to raise oversubscribed rounds both times with some really unique perspectives.

AI assessment note: “I would much rather have them as customers than as investors”

Q and copper wires specifically serving some of our, you know, AT&T and other kinds of internet needs. Um, our copper wires get stolen in my neighborhood on the order of once every three weeks, um, which is insane. So something has changed in the price of copper, and it sounds like you're saying maybe something has changed in demand for copper. Can you say a bit more about those things?

A Well, it will surprise no one that supply and demand are intimately linked in some regard. I remember watching an episode of The Wire where one of the characters goes and steals copper wire, which this is from, what, 20 years ago? It's just become increasingly prevalent because copper prices are going up. A lot of critical minerals like lithium, if you were to look at the prices over the past few years, it would be a roller coaster that's pretty fun to ride on. Copper is just that lift hill going into a roller coaster. Part of that is because we, as I want to say, the people that think about technology and innovation are starting to realize that we just Do not have enough copper. Companies like Wood Mackenzie, where I used to work, have been trying to sound the alarm for years and years and years now. Um, but the other thing is that copper supply has been relatively inelastic. As I mentioned, new mines take 10 to 16 plus years from discovery to first ore, and we've seen Nearly every technology advancement that has made my life easier has required additional copper beyond what the original projections were. That's not counting places where the grid needs to be modernized, like Alaska, where I grew up, or even in Houston, Texas, where I lived, and electrification of developing nations, whereas you move from small-scale microgrids or not having reliable electricity, having access …

AI assessment note: “copper supply has been relatively inelastic. As I mentioned, new mines take 10 to 16”

Q I love that. Okay. And so what have you actually built so far? We've talked about your two garages, which is really an exciting expansion for you all. But so tell me what you've built in the lab and what you've been able to deploy so far in the field.

A Um, We are live in the field right now in Arizona. We are working with a very cool mining customer that, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see an announcement about that at some point in the foreseeable future. Um, I don't mean to downplay it in just two garages. We have a full analytics lab where we can quantify elemental analysis. We can do some, a lot of the chemistry insight. We have a DNA sequencer. We have a MySeq here. We have, uh, the ability to run over a hundred columns in parallel with instrumentation. We have our bio rig, which is where we grow the microbes on site. That is in the final wet stages of commissioning with an incredible engineering firm. So we're, we're in the field.

AI assessment note: “We are live in the field right now in Arizona.”

Q And what do you think resonates the most when you're doing this? Is it really about the economic value that you bring, or are they really interested in the sustainability angle, or is it both?

A I think it's transparency. I think it's saying at the end of the day, here's where your mine is. Here are the ore types you're dealing with. Here's your challenges. Here's where we think, we think we can add value. We're going to prove it to you at increasing scale. We're going to earn the right to be here, and we're not going to oversell what we do. There have been, most of these heavy industries have had versions of snake oil that come and they say they're magically going to fix everything, um, and they don't. And so being honest about, hey, This is what we think, and if it doesn't work, this is how we'll know. Um, that to me has been the most important thing. Also, going back to what you need as a CEO, how you operate external and internal conversations should be really aligned with your values, and so sometimes that means saying no to great projects because Your incentives are ultimately not aligned, or it's not the best place for the company or the customer.

AI assessment note: “I think it's transparency. I think it's saying at the end of the day”

Q Um, awesome. Ok, so let's get into your technology. What specifically is the innovation at the core of Endolith, and what do you do?

A We use microbial communities to get more critical minerals out of the materials that have already been discovered. Now, I love microbes. Microbes have been around for billions of years, and they're incredibly good at releasing elements from rocks. What we do at Endolith is we leverage these microbes to get more copper and other critical minerals out of low-grade ore, and we turn it into a feedback cycle where we are collecting data from nearly everything. We're bringing it into the cloud and then figuring out which microbes we add into these existing field deployments to get way more copper out, which means Instead of new mines or waiting, we're able to leverage the mines that already exist to get more copper.

AI assessment note: “We use microbial communities to get more critical minerals out of the materials”

Q would say, almost against biological approaches because we tried so many of them in climate tech one point out mostly around algal biofuels and things went real belly up. So did you come into this knowing that there was a bit of a bias around sort of like the climate and sustainability community? Did you not care? Do you think it's unfounded? I'm just curious whether that's something you've confronted.

A Biomining, so just taking a step back, biology has had a rough ride in this industry and a lot of industries, and I get it. Yeah. Part of it is that a lot of it has stayed in the lab much longer than it's needed to, and scaling up complex systems is, can be somewhat chaotic, can be incredibly chaotic. Um, I also love when someone says, oh, you know, I don't think that's gonna work. We tried this. Or if someone says, I have a personal bias against this, That, to me, first off, is great, because then you can unpack that, and whenever there's confusion, you can double-click on that and learn from it. But I also think you shouldn't stop trying to solve the really hard problems just because it didn't work before.

AI assessment note: “biology has had a rough ride in this industry and a lot of industries, and I get it.”

Q And when you do that, is it generally because you know that, like, this particular heap, for example, isn't gonna be a good one for you to demonstrate, or is it more that, like, I don't know, that there's a misalignment in ethics with you and, like, other company leaders? Like, what are the pieces that get you ultimately to say no?

A Yeah, I've seen great ethical alignment across the board. Like, we have safety as our core value. Working with a lot of the mining supermajors, you have to go through incredible due diligence. You have to share your anti-corruption policies, your anti-child slavery policies, and that's the way it should be. Most of the time, when we say not right now, it's because there's a really interesting mine, and they want to extract, insert really cool critical mineral here, or really cool element on the periodic table. And it's orthogonal to our core value, but it's not necessarily the best. Or if the mineralogy is just not going to be one where we think we're going to ultimately get recovery, we don't want to lead anyone on.

AI assessment note: “Most of the time, when we say not right now, it's because”

Q Got it. And so when you mentioned earlier that it's 16 years from, you know, basically getting a site to First Copper, is this why that it just takes that much time to crush up the rock and put it into a pile?

A So there's so many more factors at play. You have to get project financing. You have to get the permits done. You have to get the social license to operate in stakeholder engagement. You have to talk to the people who, if you are putting a mine in their backyard, they have to be okay with it. Um, it's, it's part of why I don't shy away from mines in our backyard. Living as an American citizen, my critical mineral footprint is orders of magnitude greater than someone living in a developing nation. I get a new cell phone every year or two. I am guilty of Amazon priming cords. I have a big footprint here. I think it is important for us as citizens to understand that that just does not come from some country that we don't know about and get shipped over the world. That actually comes from rocks. I think mines are a great reminder of that, where you can actually see them, and using them as a tool both for domestic critical mineral production, but also workforce development is incredibly important. And I also like them in America and in our backyard because we can go to site. We have OSHA. We have MSHA. We have child slavery protections here, and that, I believe, should be encouraged.

AI assessment note: “So there's so many more factors at play. You have to get project financing.”

Q That's a fair point. I love that you can take lessons that way. Okay, so let's go back to really what brought you into this. So you're an astrobiologist. What made you decide, I know I'm going to use biology to improve copper extraction?

A I love when people ask me this because they're always like, oh, what was that moment you knew you were a founder? And like, there's, there's never a moment. I've, I've had a pretty cool career leading up to this point. Uh, after my PhD, I was an oil and gas geologist. I was at a biotech startup where I met some incredible people. I then pivoted completely at AWS and was a lead solution architect for their energy data platforms, where I spent my days in the cloud before becoming a VP of data architecture and data engineering at Woodmac and then CTO of Sambita. So it's a long story in there. Um, I never woke up one day and decided I was going to be a founder and do this. Instead, A lot of ideas started living rent-free in my head, and I came to the inevitable conclusion that if I didn't do this, no one else would be able to, or they would not be able to do it in the way that I wanted to. And that insipid idea is much more like an alien that just bursts out of your chest, and you're like, well, I have to do this, because if I don't, I will have to live with the consequences of not being the one spending my limited time on Earth trying to do that.

AI assessment note: “I came to the inevitable conclusion that if I didn't do this, no one else would”

Q industries on the Planet and a controversial one, but I think my first question about this is, okay, so there's huge amounts of copper demand. Yes, it takes a long time to build a new copper mine, but like, is the current mining industry meeting the moment? Like, what's happening on the industry side? Are they willing to innovate? What's, how fast can they move? How's that going so far?

A Yeah, so I think, like, with many of these complex topics, Both sides have valid points, and that to me is the problem. The world needs more copper on a scale that is hard to overstate. Demand is doubling by twenty-thirty-five. We need more copper between now and twenty-fifty than in the history of human civilization. That includes the Bronze Age. So it's not, and every time we have a data center conversation, copper is included in it. But at the same time, some of the public opposition to mining is earned, and I'm, I'm not gonna stand here and defend the industry as a whole. But I'm not gonna disown it either. The question in front of us, I think, is inherently a little bit more poignant. It is, do we have our next ton of copper come from a new pit, or from the stuff that's already sitting on the surface in a mine that exists? I grew up in Alaska, where my dad was an oil and gas geologist on the North Slope, and most of my friends' parents worked at Red Dog Mine, or at other mining places. Growing up where we spent most of our weekends fishing and backpacking and riding boats and being in nature, but also needing to, we have, we had the reality that we were working in net extractive industries. Balancing that in a way that provides the right stewardship is incredibly important and incredibly meaningful. It's why we're now working with some of our Alaskan stakeholders, and we'r…

AI assessment note: “The question in front of us, I think, is inherently a little bit more poignant.”