Cyclic Materials, an advanced metals recycling company, has secured an equity investment from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, with an aim to expedite climate tech innovation.
Based in Canada, Cyclic Materials is building a circular supply chain for rare earth elements and other critical metals.
Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund is an initiative focused on fast tracking technology development and implementation of new climate innovations.
The fund’s investment in Cyclic Materials is said to reflect Microsoft’s commitment to a circular economy and its interest in recycling rare earth elements from hard drives.
Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund senior director Brandon Middaugh said: “Microsoft is working to achieve zero waste across our direct operations, products, and packaging by 2030. This means adopting a circular economy approach.
“As demand for rare earth elements continues to grow in importance, we’re excited to support the creation of a sustainable supply of these materials with this investment.”
Cyclic Materials said that it has developed CC360, a patent-pending technology, over the last two years.
The technology is specifically designed to address the challenge of recovering rare earths from end-of-life hard drives.
According to Cyclic Materials, hard drives are typically sent to IT asset disposal (ITAD) companies where they undergo data destruction and shredding to recover metals like gold and silver, but the rare earths remain unrecovered.
By using the CC360 technology, ITAD companies can now selectively separate a portion of hard drives to recover rare earths, while continuing their traditional disposal processes for the remaining drives.
These separated magnets containing rare earths can then be processed using its technology, thereby creating an additional value stream from hard drive disposal, said Cyclic Materials.
Cyclic Materials co-founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman said: “We’re thrilled by this endorsement from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund as a key strategic investor who is like minded in creating a circular supply chain for rare earth elements contained in hard drives used in their data centre operations.
“This support enables us to accelerate the deployment of our commercial facilities, which is a critical step in growing the domestic supply of rare earths in North America that support the energy transition.”
Founded in 2021, Cyclic Materials has focused on developing technologies to economically and sustainably transform end-of-life (EOL) products into valuable raw materials domestically.
Recycling rare earths offers substantial environmental advantages over traditional mining, including reduced carbon footprint and water usage, said the company.
Recently, Cyclic Materials launched its “Hub100” facility in Kingston, Ontario, utilising its proprietary hydrometallurgical technology, REEPure, to meet the growing demand for domestic sources of mixed rare earth oxide (MREO) in North America.
