Alta is pioneering a new mineral separation technology that can extract valuable resources from complex material streams. Using advanced biochemistry, Alta can isolate rare earth elements and other critical minerals with exceptional precision, energy efficiency, and environmental performance.

The 21st-century economy runs on advanced materials derived from rare earth elements and other critical minerals and metals that are essential for everything from defense systems and high-performance computing to telecommunications, medical devices, transportation, and energy infrastructure. Today, China controls the vast majority of global processing and refining capacity for these resources, creating strategic vulnerabilities for the U.S. and its allies. Alta’s technology offers a domestic, clean, low cost and scalable way to recover these materials from unconventional sources – bolstering supply chain resilience and economic and national security.

Alta is backed by leading venture capital firms and government entities that share its mission to strengthen national security and critical mineral supply chains. Alta’s investors include Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DCVC, Voyager, Orion Resource Partners, In-Q-Tel, Overture, WovenEarth, Baruch Future Ventures, and Juniper. Alta has also received funding and support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Innovation Hub, and the State of Colorado.

Alta’s technology leverages engineered proteins to selectively bind and separate metal ions. By adapting and enhancing these naturally occurring capabilities, Alta has developed a platform that achieves purity levels and selectivity beyond the reach of conventional chemical or thermal extraction methods – especially when dealing with complex feedstocks.

Alta’s protein-based separation platform can recover valuable materials from both traditional mining ores and sources that have historically been too complex to process economically, like electronic waste. Our process is especially well-suited to extract target minerals from feedstocks that contain many neighboring (and thus nearly identical) elements on the periodic table as well as those that contain low concentration of the target metals. This versatility allows Alta to work with:

• Mined ores containing rare earth elements and other critical minerals.

• End-of-life magnets in electronic waste (e-waste) from consumer electronics (e.g., hard disk drives, cellphones, certain speakers), energy systems (e.g., EV and wind turbine motors), MRI machines, defense equipment, and other applications.

• Mining tailings and coal ash that contain residual metals.

Alta creates customized metal-binding proteins with a high affinity for the target metal ion, even when those ions are mixed with other metals that have nearly identical chemical properties. These proteins are immobilized within a standard column-based separation system. As the mixture passes through the column, the target metal is selectively captured while other elements pass through. The conditions within the column are then deliberately adjusted to release the captured metal, producing a high-purity (>99.5%) output in a continuous process.

Alta’s technology delivers advantages over traditional mineral separation approaches, which typically require numerous stages and very large volumes of toxic solvents. Its engineered proteins are ultra-selective, able to distinguish between metal ions with nearly identical properties, such as neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy). Alta’s process avoids many of the harsh chemicals and repeated exposures used in conventional methods and thus supports a cleaner, more sustainable approach to mineral recovery.

Absolutely. Alta’s protein-based platform is a flexible, molecular approach that can be extended to extract other critical minerals from diverse sources – including ores, e-waste, brines, waste from mine sites, and industrial wastewater.

Alta’s separation platform can serve any sector that depends on high-purity rare earths, critical minerals, or other metals, including:

• Defense – guidance systems, advanced alloys, secure domestic supply chains;

• Electronics & Semiconductors – smartphones, displays, data centers, AI hardware;

• Energy & Transportation – electric motors, wind turbines, EV batteries; and

• Recycling & Resource Recovery – e-waste, magnets, batteries, industrial waste streams.

Alta’s modular, low-CapEx system can be deployed in parallel production lines at multiple sites. Once the first commercial facility is operational, additional capacity can be added quickly by replicating production modules. This approach reduces time-to-market and allows Alta to respond rapidly to changes in global demand for critical minerals.