Giraffe Bio has raised a $6.4 million seed round to develop mineral-specific chemicals that it says can help mines recover up to 5% more copper. The round was led by Orion Industrial Ventures, with participation from BHP Ventures, Twynam, Air Capital and Baruch Future Ventures.
The startup says it can extract more copper because it engineers compounds specific to each mine's mineral content. In mining, an additional 5% "is really very material," co-founder and CEO Alejandro Buffo Sempé told TechCrunch, adding that most would be happy with an additional 1% to 2%.
Rather than douse ores with bacteria thought to facilitate copper extraction, Giraffe Bio grows engineered microbes in a bioreactor to produce the bespoke compounds. Those chemicals are then inserted into a mine's existing process.
"We can leverage all of the biological machinery without having to deal with keeping alive a microbe, which is very complicated in [mining] environments," Buffo Sempé said.
The compounds are used in a mine's flotation process, in which chemicals help minerals either float or sink in a bath of water so operators can skim the desirable minerals off the top. Giraffe Bio is also using the same biotech platform to develop depressors, which bind to unwanted compounds like arsenic and sink them out of the mix.
The startup is beginning with copper, but says its platform can be tailored to other minerals. "The beauty of this is that we can target copper or we can target gold or silver," Buffo Sempé said. The company says it can also supplant toxic chemicals in the flotation process.