Still Bright's Electrochemical Copper Process Aims for a 500-Ton Demo by 2028

Copper is the workhorse of electrification, but producing it is a dirty, energy-intensive affair. The traditional path from sulfide ore to shiny cathode involves roasting the rock at over 1,200 degrees Celsius, a process that accounts for a significant chunk of the metal's carbon footprint and capital cost. A New Jersey startup called Still Bright is betting there is a quieter, cooler way to do it, using electricity and a vat of vanadium solution instead of a blast furnace [Still Bright, About Us].

Founded in 2022, the company is developing an electrochemical process it calls RACER. The core idea is elegantly simple: soak crushed ore in a proprietary vanadium-based solution, apply an electric current, and watch the copper come out in minutes instead of days [Dealroom, Unknown]. The vanadium solution is regenerated and reused, and the whole thing runs at room temperature and pressure. It is a classic hard-tech bet, trading the brute force of heat for the precise control of chemistry.

The Wedge: Cost and Carbon

Still Bright's commercial argument rests on two pillars that matter to mining companies: capital expenditure and emissions. Building a conventional smelter is a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year project with a massive permitting headache. The company claims its modular, electrochemical process requires significantly lower capex [HAX, Unknown]. On the emissions side, the energy input is electricity, which can be sourced from renewables, potentially turning a mine site into a producer of low-carbon copper. The company says the process can recover between 90% and 99% of the copper from sulfide ore, matching or exceeding conventional yields [Still Bright, The Tech].

For an industry under pressure to clean up its act while meeting exploding demand, the pitch is compelling. The technology also opens the door to processing lower-grade ores and existing mine waste piles, effectively expanding the resource base without digging new holes [HAX, Unknown].

The Team and the Ticket

The company is a deep academic spinout from Columbia University, with the founding team steeped in electrochemistry.

2022 Founding | 0 | M USD
2024 JLL Foundation Loan | (Undisclosed) | M USD
2025 Seed Round | 18.7 | M USD

• Jon Vardner, CTO. A postdoctoral researcher at Columbia, he co-invented the core process and spun it out with an Activate fellowship in 2022 [Still Bright, About Us].
• Alan West, Chief Science Officer. A Columbia chemical engineering professor and a named chair in electrochemistry, he provides the foundational scientific heft [Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center, Unknown].
• Randy Allen, CEO. A second-time founder with over 17 years in related industries, he is tasked with steering the technology from the lab to the mine site [Still Bright, About Us].

This pedigree attracted a heavyweight seed round. In July 2025, the company closed an $18.7 million round co-led by deep-tech specialist Material Impact and Bill Gates' climate fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The syndicate included Azolla Ventures, Fortescue, Impact Science Ventures, and SOSV [TechCrunch, July 2025]. That is not just money, it is a signal of credibility in the notoriously difficult mining and climate tech sectors.

The Path to a Ton of Copper

The funding has a clear, tangible destination: building hardware. The company's immediate milestone is a demonstration-scale reactor, planned for 2027 or 2028, capable of producing about 500 tons of copper per year [TechCrunch, July 2025]. That is a meaningful scale for proving the chemistry and engineering work outside a lab. The long-term vision is a commercial system producing 10,000 tons annually [TechCrunch, July 2025]. The team, estimated at around 16 people, is now focused on scaling the continuous process, a challenge they worked on with the hard-tech accelerator HAX [Built In, Unknown] [SOSV, October 2025].

The Scale-Up Hurdle

The risks here are not about the science in a beaker, but about the engineering in a shipping container. Electrochemical processes are notoriously finicky at scale, sensitive to impurities in the ore and the relentless demands of continuous operation. The mining industry is also conservative, with long decision cycles and a justified fear of unproven technology halting a billion-dollar operation.

Still Bright's answer is the staged demo. A 500-ton-per-year unit is small enough to de-risk but large enough to generate real product for a partner to test. Success would provide the crucial data on operating costs, maintenance, and reliability that the industry requires. The backing of Fortescue, a mining giant with its own aggressive decarbonization goals, is a strategic asset, offering a potential pathway to a first commercial deployment.

The Unit Economics of Green Copper

So, what would it take to move the needle? The global copper market is about 25 million tons per year. Still Bright's initial commercial target of 10,000 tons is a rounding error in that total, but it is not the point. The point is proving a new production cost curve. If the process is as cheap and clean as promised, it could spawn dozens of similar units. A back-of-the-envelope calculation: at today's copper price of roughly $9,500 per ton, a single 10,000-ton system would represent about $95 million in annual metal output. The real prize is shaving even a few hundred dollars off the production cost per ton, which adds up fast across a global industry.

For Still Bright to matter, it must eventually beat the incumbent not on purity, but on dollars. It is not competing with other startups, there are none in the sources. It is competing with the smelter. The company's bet is that in a world pricing carbon and scrambling for green metal, a quiet electrochemical box next to the mine will prove more economical than a roaring fire in the distance.

Sources

1. [Still Bright, About Us] About Us | https://www.stillbright.co/about
2. [TechCrunch, July 2025] How a New Jersey startup found an electrifying way to slash copper costs | https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/30/how-a-new-jersey-startup-found-an-electrifying-way-to-slash-copper-costs/
3. [Dealroom, Unknown] Still Bright company information | https://app.dealroom.co/companies/still_bright
4. [HAX, Unknown] Still Bright - HAX | https://hax.co/company/still-bright/
5. [Still Bright, The Tech] The Tech | https://www.stillbright.co/tech
6. [Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center, Unknown] Alan West profile | https://energy.columbia.edu/people/west-alan
7. [Built In, Unknown] Company profile | https://builtin.com/company/still-bright
8. [SOSV, October 2025] How HAX Helps Hard Tech Founders Rapidly Prototype | https://sosv.com/prototyping-to-production-how-hax-helps-hard-tech-founders-build-hard-tech/
9. [JLL Foundation, February 2025] 2024 Annual Report | https://foundation.jll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024_AR_FINAL.pdf