Impossible Metals
Updated in September, 2025
Headquarter: San Jose, California
Year Founded: 2020
Employees: ~20 | 2025
Business Status: Pre-Revenue (pilot pending; permits in progress)
Industry Sectors: UAVs, mining, robotics, energy transition, critical materials
What is Impossible Metals?
Impossible Metals is a U.S.-Canadian robotics company developing autonomous underwater vehicles to selectively harvest polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor, targeting critical minerals for EVs, energy storage, and AI infrastructure. Their vision is to commercialize deep-sea mining while overcoming the environmental and regulatory challenges that have historically prevented large-scale deployment.
Why do we like it?
Environmental and Social Impact: Impossible Metals is a public benefit corporation explicitly focused on responsibly mining critical battery metals from the deep sea with minimal environmental impact. They use advanced autonomous underwater robotics and AI to selectively harvest metals while protecting marine ecosystems. This aligns with resilience investing goals of promoting sustainability and mitigating climate risk.
Strategic Supply Chain Resilience: The company addresses critical supply chain vulnerabilities for battery metals essential to clean energy, electrification, and national security. They seek to provide a secure, domestic, and environmentally responsible source of key minerals like nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese, reducing reliance on foreign sources and increasing economic and strategic resilience.
Innovative Technology and Scalability: Their robotics-based mining approach is poised to be a lower-cost, scalable, and more resilient alternative to traditional highly centralized dredge mining methods with single points of failure. This technological innovation increases operational resilience.
Market Opportunities and Policy Influence: The total available market for battery metals is huge, and Impossible Metals has already helped shape policy and regulatory frameworks for responsible deep-sea mining. Their positioning aligns well with long-term resilience investment themes of supporting companies solving systemic environmental and strategic risks.
Alignment with Clean Energy Transition: By accelerating critical minerals supply for clean energy deployment, Impossible Metals supports the broader resilience goal of fostering economic systems capable of adapting and thriving through the energy transition.
National Security: Critical metals are the basis for resilience and independence from mining and processing monopolists such as China and Russia.
What does Impossible Materials?
Their robotic system, called Eureka, is designed to harvest minerals responsibly with minimal disturbance to marine ecosystems, preserving biodiversity by leaving a majority of nodules untouched. The company aims to establish a resilient, environmentally conscious supply chain for critical minerals domestically and internationally, positioning deep-sea mining as a faster, cheaper, and lower-impact alternative to traditional land-based mining. Impossible Metals also collaborates with refining companies to build an end-to-end sustainable minerals supply chain in the U.S. to support energy transition and national security needs.
Market Opportunity
Impossible Metals addresses a large and growing market opportunity centered on critical battery metals essential for electric vehicles (EVs), energy storage, and advanced technologies. The global battery metals market, valued at around $11.3 billion in 2024, is projected to reach nearly $23 billion by 2033, growing at an annual rate of about 8%. Key metals include nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese—the very minerals contained in polymetallic nodules on the seafloor that Impossible Metals targets. The company aims to provide a sustainable, domestically secure supply chain alternative to traditional mining, helping reduce reliance on foreign sources while meeting rising demand driven by the global clean energy transition and electrification efforts. Impossible Metals’ technology is designed to selectively harvest these minerals with minimal environmental disruption, offering cost-effective and scalable access to 3 to 10 times the metal reserves compared to land-based sites. Their partnership with refining companies to build an integrated, transparent U.S. supply chain aligns with government priorities, including supporting President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order to unlock America’s offshore critical minerals. This positions Impossible Metals in a strategic role to serve expanding markets requiring reliable, sustainable, and responsibly sourced battery metals.
Most Recent Financing Status
As of mid-2025, Impossible Metals is moving into growth mode and plans to raise over $1 billion later this year to scale operations. The company is actively advancing partnerships, such as a Memorandum of Understanding with Aqua Metals to create a responsible and domestic critical minerals supply chain in the U.S. Additionally, the Kingdom of Bahrain has sponsored their application for a deep-sea mining permit from the International Seabed Authority, supporting their international expansion efforts. This fundraising and partnership activity shows strong momentum for upcoming commercial deployment of their technology. They have also received government grants and additional funding.
Impossible Metals Stock Price
Impossible Metals is a private company, not publicly traded. There is no active secondary market in the company yet.
Courtesy of Caplight
Impossible Metals Valuation
As of 2025, Impossible Metals is a private company preparing for major fundraising, targeting to raise over $1 billion for commercial operations. The company has not publicly disclosed an official valuation recently. For context, listed deep-sea mining peers show significant market caps:
• The Metals Company (TMC), a leading public player in polymetallic nodule mining, is valued around $2.5 billion USD.
• Ocean Minerals LLC is around $1.2 billion,
• Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) around $1.6 billion,
• Deep Ocean Resources Development Co., Ltd. (DORD) about $950 million USD, all operating in the same seafloor resource space. These companies have secured exploration licenses in areas like the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and are positioning for early commercial mining phases. Their valuations reflect growing investor interest in securing critical battery metals under stringent environmental and regulatory frameworks. Impossible Metals, with its U.S.-Canada base, proprietary autonomous robotics tech, and strong ESG focus, is positioned to target a comparable or potentially higher valuation relative to peers upon successful capital raises and commercial milestones. It emphasizes a responsible, low-impact approach, which could justify a premium valuation in ESG-conscious markets, especially given its alignment with U.S. strategic supply chain goals.
Impossible Metals Notable Investors
Notable investors in Impossible Metals include Chalet, Y Combinator, and Justin Hamilton, among various smaller funds and individual investors. The company secured around $15 million in seed and pre-seed funding rounds, supporting its development of advanced underwater robotics technology for sustainable deep-sea mining. Additionally, the firm has received government grants and is actively building partnerships, such as the recent Memorandum of Understanding with Aqua Metals, to advance a domestic critical minerals supply chain. Mike Regan, a prominent venture investor and strategist with a background in robotics and AI platforms, was the first investor and now serves as Impossible Metals’ Chief Growth Officer, helping lead its capital strategy and scaling efforts.
Impossible Metals Strategic Hedge
Impossible Metals’ strategic hedge versus competitors lies primarily in its innovative autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) technology, which offers several key competitive advantages:
• Cost Efficiency: Their robotic fleet eliminates the need for expensive surface production vessels and complex ship-to-ship ore transfers required by traditional dredging and riser-based deep-sea mining systems. This reduces capital expenses (CapEx) and operational costs, with estimated costs about 25% lower than those of dredging tractors with riser systems.
• Scalability: The AUV fleet allows scalable operations by incrementally adding robots, enabling a small-scale start with modest capital outlay that can grow as more investment is deployed.
• Resilience: Unlike traditional systems that have single points of failure, the fleet approach is more resilient. Failure of individual robots does not halt overall operation, maintaining production continuity.
• Environmental and Social Impact: Their technology uses AI-driven selective harvesting, minimizing sediment disturbance and preserving marine biodiversity by leaving about 60% of nodules untouched. This aligns with stringent environmental standards sought by regulators and investors, differentiating them in a market where environmental concerns are paramount.
• U.S.-Canada Focus: Impossible Metals offers a North American solution, helping reduce reliance on foreign sources for critical minerals and supporting national strategic interests, with direct involvement in shaping responsible mining policy. Together, these factors represent a robust strategic hedge against other players focused on traditional, more disruptive, or less scalable deep-sea mining techniques
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