Can we engineer Critical Minerals?

0:00Mike Butcher:Welcome to Path Founders with me, Mike Butcher. We like to unpack the code, the capital and the consequences in the startup ecosystem. The technologies meant to deliver the energy transition from hydrogen electrolyzers to batteries, electronics and solar panels depend on critical minerals, which are scarce and now subject to huge geopolitical forces. Indeed, Donald Trump has even threatened to invade Greenland to get to them. The conventional response is to try and find new deposits and dig more mines. But Milvus Advanced, a startup based out of Oxford, UK, is attempting something more radical, engineering new kinds of replacement materials which can mimic the operations of critical minerals once they are applied into the supply chain of electronics and electrical devices.

0:55Mike Butcher:Its founder and CEO, Dr. Asiya Kazdi, developed the foundations of the technology during her research at Oxford University. And Milvus says it has now moved from milligram scale experiments to kilogram scale pilot production. And the company has also raised a six point nine million dollars seed round in 2025. So the question is, can we reduce our dependence on critical minerals with this kind of radical engineering approach? Asiya, thanks very much for joining us on Path Founders. Thank you for having me, Mike. Well, it's a fascinating story and it places you right at the centre of so much that's going on in the world today.

1:39Mike Butcher:But let's just go back to your discovery during your PhD in Oxford. Tell us a little bit more about that and how you stumbled across this process. Yeah, so basically I'm an inorganic chemist by background and I did a PhD here at the University of Oxford and the idea that was very prevalent in material science, especially around solar cells and optoelectronics, that we have a critical mineral issue with the current state of the earth minerals. For example, we use in touch screen indium, 70 % of the reserves in China, and the material has some technical issues that renders it quasi impossible to be used in the next generation devices, for example, flexible devices.

2:28So there was this idea, always this idea, okay, we can actually, we need to find alternative material and this material have to be better technically. The interest I had, I was like, how about actually adding another level instead of just thinking about performance elements, how about thinking about sustainability and having a supply of this material that is more abundant. And so this is where the idea came from, how about substituting expensive or scarce elements with earth abundant one. The idea came also with the fact that the 20th century we have made breakthrough around nanotech and quantum development and there was this whole idea that properties of materials can be engineered in the lab.

3:16However, there was not a real translation into the lab for some reason. And so for me, it was really important to show a case where you can substitute this rare or scarce minerals or metals with earth abundant one using nanotechnology. And this is combining material science, chemistry, and physics going and with ambition and vision. This is how it led to this breakthrough, creating substitutes for indium using nanowayers that are long, thin nano hair particles. And towards the end of my PhD, just very serendipity finding an alternative to platinum by exploring nano alloying this material at the nanoscale.

4:00Mike Butcher:So what you're saying is these nano alloys are able to mimic or replace the kinds of critical materials which the world is currently fighting over. Exactly. And what I'm saying more than that, we can substitute any kind of metal if we understand actually how this metal work in a specific application. So it's always application-led. And for example, platinum that's used in catalysis has specific properties that makes it very attractive for catalysis. What I'm saying is that using nano engineering, the understanding of nanotechnology, we can create bespoke material using earth-abondant elements and combine them to actually replicate these properties.

4:44Mike Butcher:I mean, that's quite incredible, really, isn't it? So what's it taking to do this kind of thing? What kinds of production facilities do you need? Because obviously to create these kinds of things at scale would require some sort of production facility or factory. So how are you doing it at the moment and how do you plan to scale it up? So yeah, it's a deep tech company. So we do really fundamental science, but for the aim is to industrialize them. So we need specific type of facilities, chemical labs with the required equipment, but also specific items. so for example we need for in our case we need what we call fume hoods and uh film hose are chimney type uh boots that we use in chemistry and you would think that they are very prevalent but actually they're quite rare in the uk and so they are like there are very few places where you can do these experiments but other than that you don't need that much what when i created millibus i had also a goal is to kind of industrialize this material scale up in a sustainable way so for example our synthesis are made in water and this allows you to scale up but actually not using very harsh environments so we don't use for example gases and we use low temperature to create our materials and so we don't need that much in terms of facility compared to other technologies for example just like very specific like for instance this pimples so in other words you're saying that uh you you can do it at kind of room temperature or something well room temperature below the boiling temperature of water right i see and um what's going on at the moment are you able to produce uh you know have these experiments uh created you know quality materials can you kind to fully replace some critical minerals so we uh for the specific application of cateuses we have an anode material that is one like another than cattle material that has complete substitute so non-platinum group metal substitute of the current state of the art that's used in industry for cathode and anode and this one we have synthesized them we have actually scaled them up uh to like what as you mentioned your introduction now we can produce kilogram based material and we have validated them with third parties so there are third-party industries that have tested our materials and have actually shown that our the performance of our material exceeds the expectation and are better than what is available commercially so right now we're at this stage and now we're expanding actually for other application it's still based with the same principle really synthesizing nano alloys very cheap to substitute critical minerals and in the catalysis market we're expanding to other applications that really are desperately needing a substitute and also going to other markets such as opto electronics and displays right and and can you integrate these your materials into existing uh setups and in existing processes do or do your clients and customers do they need to redesign anything at their end the it's really important that when we create these materials and before even sending them even for like uh with to our collaborators that it's a plug-in plate so one-on-one replacement because no industry wants to change their whole supply chain or how they manufacture stuff and for us how we do it is that we have powders we send them to the customer and we tell them just like how you use your old powders just use ours the same way and we never had any issue with the customer coming back and saying actually uh this doesn't work right and and to what extent are you able to produce um you know for for are these sandboxed or are they experiments with customers or are you actually in production mode so right now we are like in experiment and we have actually validating the so when you are in catalysis they are like the first preliminary experiment and then you have further experiment to validate that takes some time so right now we are at this stage with all the customers but we aim to have like a kind of contract by like by the couple of months basically right um and um tell us a little bit more about the company how many people have you got uh you i know that you've raised some cash from investors like Hoxton.

9:35Mike Butcher:Tell us about how the company is scaling up and that kind of thing. So right now we are around 10 people. We are mostly scientists that are in the lab. And the idea is actually to expand this, to expand, to double the amount of people that we are right now in a year time, like and with different roles, not only scientists, but also like commercial roles. So this is the idea how we see the company. At the moment we are based in Oxford. So this will be on site and most people are actually here. Right. And you're planning to get on more staff and you've raised 6.9 million dollars seed. Are you looking to raise any more in the near future?

10:17In the near future, yeah, we are planning to raise because the idea is right now, even though we are able to produce kilogram scale of materials per day, we are still in pre-production. So the goal and the aim, because we are serious about like these substitutes, we want to produce to arrive to a level of ton batches. And for this, you need actually a certain amount of capex. It's not the same basically facility that you need. You need actually to build a production facility. And so we will need to raise more money for that. Absolutely.

10:50Mike Butcher:Right. What sort of figure are you looking for? Are you looking for a seed plus or a series A? At the moment, we don't have a number in mind, but it will be a series A, most likely. Right. And what about constraints on the company? Because it's obviously a quite involved chemical process. Can this be produced at scale in the UK, in the UK environment? And what sort of hurdles have you found when you've tried to kind of scale up what you're doing? Yeah, the UK is really great. And I'm a big fan of the UK. I'm not British myself. I came here for my studies and I have stayed because I really love this country.

11:35There is a pool of talent that is incredible. There are however some hurdles. What have we observed? And I think it's because of like some political event that happened the last 10 years. It becomes less and less favorable to build a startup once you scale because there are less access to funding compared to, for example, you have amazing incentives in Europe and in the US. And they are not that available in the UK and the support of the government should be there, especially in our field in material science where we are like, because what we believe and what we say is that material science is the foundation of the next generation technology, industrialization, and also sovereignty, because these materials need to be developed in the country to ensure a kind of stable source of industrial fabric, basically.

12:32And for us, this is one of the harder. Just like even when we talk about the facilities, there are very few facilities. It's really hard to build in the UK. When you look at Europe or even the US, they already have that. So there is a push to move away from the UK. But for me, the idea is actually to scale here in the next years. And ideally, after if we move to the US or Europe, it's building a site there, but remaining the HQ here in the UK. So there are these kind of hurdles, but talent-wise, it's incredible. The other one, though, is the UK was attractive because it could attract many scientists from the US and also Europe.

13:19and very few of them now are coming since Brexit. And so now we are dealing, we know how to deal with, for example, with immigration, but it's a bit more tedious than it used to be in the past. And I think it's really important because it brings like fresh knowledge and also like a kind of, you want to have a space where you have like multiple cultures, but also ideas emerging that have emerged in different places coming in the country. But I would say these are the two. It's not impossible, but it's a bit challenging.

13:53Mike Butcher:Right. And you think that there'd be better scale up support, perhaps on the continent or the US. And so and you're also saying Brexit is an issue about talent. What would be your message then to people like the government fund Sovereign AI, for instance, or any other? I mean, we've just had a change of government in the UK. What sort of things would you like to see happen in order to keep you guys in the country, in the UK, developing your technology for critical minerals? Yes, support companies, startups in terms of not only funding, but having access to resources and facilities, having access to support actually to build these facilities are very costly.

14:39and right now for example we are looking at building our next lab because we need to expand and there are not many places where we can do that it's very expensive and so having this kind of support having like it would be great to have support from the government in form of maybe having them to build these facilities consulting companies right now a lot of this building have been designed for more biotech technology biotech startups and not for deep tech like ours and so it would be really great to have access to the government explain them actually what we need because ideally we would like just like what happens in europe or in the years having the government's building these facilities for us or like supporting us in building uh them so this one And having access to funding, having like the funding has been running very thin compared to a couple of years.

15:39And I have seen the change from 2022 to now has been a drastic change in terms of public funding for startup. And so there are a lot of companies that are living in the UK. And for us, we want to stay here, but we would like to have more support.

15:58Mike Butcher:Yes, well, it's clearly a difficult issue and there's a lot of constraints on government, but it's clearly a very critical industry, ironically, about critical minerals. And what you're developing does sound really quite fascinating, given how essential critical minerals are to the global economy today. But we'll have to leave it there. Founder and CEO, Dr. Asiya Kasdi there from Melvis Advance. Thanks very much for joining us on Path Canvas. Thank you, Mike.