The most expensive part of a nickel mine isn't the digging. It's the cooking. To get battery-grade metal from the most common type of ore, laterite, you need a high-pressure acid leach (HPAL) plant, a multi-billion-dollar pressure cooker that runs at over 250 degrees Celsius. BANIQL, a San Jose startup, is betting it can skip the pressure cooker altogether.
Founded in 2021, the company has developed a chemical process it says selectively extracts nickel and cobalt from laterite ore at atmospheric pressure and lower temperatures. The claim boils down to unit economics: 30% lower cost per ton of nickel produced, with near-zero waste and net-zero emissions, according to the company [BANIQL, retrieved 2024]. A recent $1,600,000 seed round, led by BEENEXT with participation from Seedstars International Ventures, A2D Ventures, Sopoong Ventures, and the XA Network, suggests some investors think the chemistry might work [TechNode, May 2024].
The chemistry wedge
BANIQL's pitch is straightforward. The global push for electric vehicles is straining nickel supply, a key cathode material. Laterite ores hold over 70% of the world's nickel resources but are notoriously energy- and capital-intensive to process. The startup's patent-pending method uses a proprietary chemical formulation to leach the target metals without the extreme heat and pressure of conventional HPAL [BANIQL, retrieved 2024]. The company has already secured a U.S. patent pending for the technology [BANIQL, retrieved 2024].
A team built for industrial scale
The founding team, led by CEO Willy Halim, appears structured for the gritty work of industrial chemistry and plant operations. Co-founder Eric Januar serves as COO, while Aristotle Vergara is the Facility Director [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024]. The board recently added Sam Leung as Chair, whose background includes roles at mining firm Centauri Minerals Inc. [Sam Leung - Centauri Minerals Inc. | LinkedIn, retrieved 2026].
| Role | Name | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Founder & CEO | Willy Halim | Leads the company. |
| Co-Founder & COO | Eric Januar | Operational lead. |
| Co-Founder & Facility Director | Aristotle Vergara | Focused on plant operations. |
| Co-Founder | SeungWan Kim | Founding team member. |
| Board Chair | Sam Leung | Brings mining industry experience. |
The incumbent's shadow
The obvious counter-bet is that HPAL, for all its faults, is a known quantity. New chemical processes face a gauntlet of scaling risks. BANIQL's early funding is meaningful, but $1,600,000 is a rounding error for a mining capex budget. The real proof will be a paid pilot with a mining partner. The company's affiliation with climate tech accelerator Third Derivative and its focus on intellectual property scaling, highlighted in a WIPO Magazine profile, are steps toward de-risking the technology for industrial buyers [WIPO Magazine, Unknown].
The path forward involves a few concrete milestones. The seed capital will likely fund further process optimization and the early stages of pilot plant design. The key watch points in the next 12 months are not software updates, but industrial signals: a named mining or refining partner for a pilot, detailed techno-economic analysis from an independent engineer, and the next funding round.
Doing a back-of-the-envelope check: if BANIQL's 30% cost reduction claim holds against a typical HPAL operation with a capital cost north of $2 billion, the savings could approach $600 million in upfront capex for a new facility. The company's success hinges on proving its chemistry can beat the incumbent's pressure cooker on its own brutal terms.