Magmatic Bio

A rare sight through the Looking-Glas into the inner workings of Magmatic. The team congregated to an ancient villa in the Austrian mountains from USA, Argentina, Norway, Poland, Germany and Austria. We look at protein structures that our dry lab either designed or found through structural searches, we compare the wet lab data that our biochemistry team produced for these candidates to identify optimisation potential. Great session.

Great piece by our colleague

Our colleague Azul María Giménez Moreno reviewing the current state of process technology in Lithium production from brines in this article. Illustrating that the current state of technology is unsuitable for a multitude of reasons to fit promising new resources.

Thanks Nucleus Capital for the shout out & Thanks to a great team Joseph A. Cotruvo, Jr. Lisa Papp Sławomir Stachura Wolfgang Ott Klemens Slunitschek Buğra Yaman Dhaarsi Jaksch, PhD Tilmann Burckstummer Azul María Giménez Moreno Vincent Smith Dr. Tobias Elwert Jorg Herwanger Oliver Siegel

Approaching week 10 of the joint Founders Factory and Rio Tinto Mining tech program. 🧑🎓 Weekly masterclass sessions on relevant entrepreneurship topics from Founders to Founders. Every single one of the Founders Factory coaches has previously founded and sold at least one business before. Their advice is credible and actionable. 👨🚒 Bi-weekly sessions with Geoffrey Boddy, our Rio Tinto mentor. Critical thinker, enthusiastic mentor - a great mountain guide on our way to find product/market fit 🛜 Access to relevant network of collaborators, investors and prospects Looking forward to what's to come ahead. We love being part of this great program

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has just been awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for protein structure prediction”. Congrats to all awardees! At Magmatic Bio, we utilize protein structure prediction to develop high-fidelity metal separation approaches. AlphaFold and Rosetta are tools that we have come to embrace and utilize on a daily basis. https://lnkd.in/ehCMkxt

25 biomining startups to add to your radar 🪨 ⛏️ Biomining is positioned to grow because it uses relatively simple biotechnology to address a macro problem that is only getting worse: the way we find new metal is unsustainable economically and environmentally - largely driven by demand from the green transition. 🔎 The Why: From a commodity economics perspective, anything that helps eke out every last milligram of copper, nickel, or lithium is valuable since prices are so high. From a sustainability perspective, the lower environmental impact of most forms of biomining (versus building a new mine) is as attractive as the cost savings. 📈 The Stats: - The IEA forecasts that by 2040 we will need between 6x and 19x more nickel than in 2020, as well as 6x-21x more cobalt and 13x-42x more lithium. 👀 The Who; There are 20+ companies globally working on Biomining, incl: - French based Genomines who have raise $6.9M to date to draw nickel out of the soil by planting “hyperaccumulator” species that are good at absorbing metal in their stems and leaves. The plants are then bioleached and nickel is reconstituted. - Singapore based Blue Planet Environmental Solutions who have raise $131M to date uses bioleaching to recover gold, palladium, and other metals from e-waste in the vast Perungudi Dump Yard. 🚀 Check out the startups working in the space: FungAI l Aether l ekolive Endolith l REEgen l Allonnia l Novalith l 1849 bio l ReeTerra l Giraffe Bio l Genomines l AlkaLi Labs l BioMetallica l BioMetallum l Magmatic Bio l Mint Innovation l Phoenix Tailings l Last Loop Metals l BRAIN Biotech AG l Maverick BioMetals l Transition Biomining l Infinite Elements, Inc l VIRIDIAN RESOURCES, L.L.C. l Blue Planet Environmental Solutions l BiotaTec - Next Gen BioMining Centre

I had the opportunity to spend 3 days with SQM Litio in Northern Chile to visit the largest Lithium mine in the world. 🇨🇱 Chile is the second largest producer of Lithium products to the EV battery supply chain 💸 SQM has obtained cost leadership for Lithium carbonate by using direct solar power to concentrate their natural brines to 4.7% #Lithium in brine. Direct solar power means the sun shines onto the ponds and evaporates the water. The desert of Atacama is the driest place on earth, yet the subsurface brines in the aquifer are among the highest Li concentration brines on earth. ⛑ Working here is one of the toughest jobs. The Mineros work in the salar at high altitude , continuously being exposed to very high UV radiation, extreme temperature swings from minus 10 in the morning to plus 30 degrees at midday. To us they are the true heroes / heroines. Without them there would be no #energytransition. For us it was an opportunity to gain a more intimate understanding of SQM's challenges and present our vision. 💹 We found that SQM has three real challenges 1️⃣ Reducing water consumption significantly - the salar is a very delicate aquifer system. 2️⃣ Improving yield - currently the process only recovers 55% of Lithium contained in the brine 3️⃣ Reducing contaminant entrainment - removing contaminants such as Boron, Sodium, Calcium and Magnesium accounts for the majority of opex. For example, cost of the reagent soda ash for Magnesium removal alone accounts for 30% of cost of production and creates significant waste salt load that need dealing with. Switching to #DLE Direct Lithium Extraction would address all three issues in the long term. Will SQM risk loosing cost leadership by doing so?

We are growing! 🚀 We welcome Buğra Yaman, Wolfgang Ott and Klemens Slunitschek (from left to right) to the team. They bring a lot of expertise in protein expression, platform development and process engineering. We are happy you joined our mission and are looking forward to our exciting journey ahead!

We are looking for a new team member with experience in computational biology and protein design!