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. It's the kind of infrastructure that makes bankers sweat and environmental reports grimace. 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, as with all things in climate tech, 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 $1.6 million 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]. If the lab results scale, the implications are twofold. For miners and refiners, it could dramatically lower the capital barrier to producing battery-spec nickel. For battery makers and automakers scrambling for secure, cleaner supply chains, it offers a potential route to lower-emission feedstock. 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, not just lab discovery. 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., a signal of intent to engage with the traditional extraction industry [Sam Leung - Centauri Minerals Inc. | LinkedIn, retrieved 2026]. This operational tilt is a necessary precondition. A novel extraction process is only as good as its first pilot plant, and that requires navigating engineering procurement, construction management, and relationships with ore suppliers.
| 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. The industry has decades of operational data, engineering know-how, and a supply chain built around it. New chemical processes face a gauntlet of scaling risks, from reagent costs and recycling loops to the unpredictable behavior of real-world ore feeds that never quite match the lab sample. BANIQL's early funding is meaningful, but $1.6 million is a rounding error for a mining capex budget. The real proof will be a paid pilot with a mining partner, moving from a beaker to a continuous flow reactor. 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, which would need to be an order of magnitude larger to finance demonstration-scale equipment.
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. That's the kind of number that gets a mining CFO's attention, not just a climate tech VC's. The company's success hinges on proving its chemistry can beat the incumbent's pressure cooker on its own brutal terms,throughput, purity, and, ultimately, the cost per ton of battery-ready nickel delivered to the dock.
Sources
- [BANIQL, retrieved 2024] Company website and technology description | https://baniql.com/
- [TechNode, May 2024] US sustainable mining startup BANIQL secures $1.6M seed funding | https://technode.global/2024/05/20/us-sustainable-mining-startup-baniql-secures-1-6m-seed-funding/
- [WIPO Magazine, Unknown] Green-nickel extraction: Baniql's IP scaling strategy | https://www.wipo.int/en/web/wipo-magazine/articles/green-nickel-extraction-baniqls-ip-scaling-strategy-88767
- [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] Baniql company profile | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/baniql
- [Sam Leung - Centauri Minerals Inc. | LinkedIn, retrieved 2026] LinkedIn profile noting Board Chair role at BANIQL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/samleungprofile/