Still Bright
Developing an electrochemical process for lower-cost, lower-emissions copper recovery from sulfide ores and mine waste.
Website: https://www.stillbright.co
Cover Block
Publicly reported
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Still Bright |
| Tagline | Developing an electrochemical process for lower-cost, lower-emissions copper recovery from sulfide ores and mine waste [Still Bright] |
| Headquarters | New Jersey, United States [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
| Founded | 2022 [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
| Stage | Seed [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
| Business model | B2B |
| Industry | Cleantech / Climatetech |
| Technology type | Hardware |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding team | Academic Spinout [Still Bright] |
| Funding label | Seed |
| Total disclosed | ~$18.7M [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
Links
Publicly reported
- Website: https://www.stillbright.co
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/still-bright
Summary and Signal
PUBLIC Still Bright is developing an electrochemical copper-extraction process that aims to replace conventional smelting with a lower-temperature, lower-emissions route, and it merits investor attention now because it paired that technical claim with an $18.7 million seed round in July 2025 led by Material Impact, alongside Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other climate and industrial investors [Still Bright] [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025]. The company was founded in 2022 and emerged from Columbia University research, with CTO Jon Vardner, chief science officer Alan West, and adviser Scott Banta anchoring the academic side of the spinout, while CEO Randy Allen is presented by the company as a second-time founder with more than 17 years in related industries [Still Bright] [Deep Tech Week, April 2025].
The core product is RACER, an electrochemical process that the company says can recover up to 99% of copper from sulfide ore at approximately ambient temperature and pressure, using a regenerative vanadium-based solution rather than a conventional smelting flow sheet [Still Bright] [Grist] [Sustainability Directory]. The technical differentiation, if it holds up at scale, is not a new copper end market but a potentially cheaper and cleaner production method that could expand the economic envelope for lower-grade sulfide ores and mine waste, though the public evidence remains largely company-stated at this stage [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025].
Still Bright's business model appears straightforwardly B2B, selling into mining companies and copper producers that want a different processing route rather than a new material category, but there are no publicly verified customers or commercial deployments in the available reporting [TechCrunch, July 2025] [PR Newswire, June 2026]. What matters over the next 12 to 18 months is less the conceptual appeal of low-emissions copper than whether the company can convert lab and pilot claims into third-party-validated demonstration progress, with public targets pointing to a mine-site unit capable of roughly 500 tons annually in 2027 or 2028 and a longer-term path to larger commercial systems [TechCrunch, July 2025] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025].
No independent source found -- Core technology and performance claims are primarily company-sourced, while funding and team details are corroborated by TechCrunch, SOSV, and Deep Tech Week.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | B2B |
| Industry / Vertical | Cleantech / Climatetech |
| Technology Type | Hardware |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Academic Spinout |
| Funding | Seed, total disclosed approximately $18.7 million [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
Still Bright was founded in 2022 and presents itself as a New Jersey-based company developing an electrochemical route to recover copper from sulfide ores without conventional smelting [Crunchbase] [Still Bright]. The company says the work emerged from Columbia University research, which places the origin squarely in academic electrochemistry rather than a mine-operator spinout [Still Bright].
The public record is still thin on corporate detail beyond that basic frame. Crunchbase lists the company as headquartered in New Jersey, while the company site identifies four founders, Randy Allen, Jon Vardner, Alan West, and Scott Banta, with Vardner, West, and Banta tied to the Columbia research base behind the process [Crunchbase] [Still Bright].
The milestone sequence that can be confirmed from these sources is short but useful. Crunchbase records the company as founded in 2022, and the company website positions RACER as the core process under development from that initial period onward [Crunchbase] [Still Bright]. The same website frames the company around lower-cost, lower-emissions copper recovery, which is directionally consistent with the category and stage, but public materials cited here do not add a legal entity name or fuller operating chronology [Still Bright].
One source, partially checked -- Confirmed by Crunchbase and the company website, with chronology limited by sparse public company-level disclosures.
The Product and the Stack
MIXED
Still Bright is building around a narrow but consequential claim: copper can be recovered from sulfide ores without the conventional smelting step, using an electrochemical process the company calls RACER [Still Bright] [TechCrunch, July 2025]. In the company’s description, RACER operates at approximately ambient temperature and pressure, uses a regenerative vanadium-based solution to pull copper from ore, and then uses electricity to regenerate that solution for reuse [Still Bright] [Dealroom.co]. Public descriptions are directionally consistent on the intended value proposition, lower energy intensity and lower process emissions relative to smelting, but the underlying performance claims remain largely company-sourced [Still Bright] [HAX] [Grist].
The technical edge, if it holds up at scale, rests on recovery and process conditions rather than a new copper end-market. Still Bright says the process can recover 90 to 99 percent of copper, with some coverage repeating the upper bound of 99 percent for sulfide ore, and it positions the system for ores and mine waste that may be less economic under incumbent routes [Still Bright, The Tech] [Still Bright] [Grist] [HAX]. Those are ambitious figures for a hardware-heavy industrial process, and the public record still stops short of an independently verified plant result. What is verifiable is that outside coverage describes a planned mine-site demonstration reactor capable of roughly 500 tons of annual copper production in 2027 or 2028, with a longer-term commercial target of 10,000 tons per year [TechCrunch, July 2025] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025] [SOSV, July 2025].
That leaves the technology story in a familiar early hard-tech posture: the chemistry is legible, the scale-up path is publicly articulated, and the proof point investors still need is operating data from equipment beyond the lab. HAX and SOSV have described work to move the process from fume-hood-bound lab setups toward a continuous and more manufacturable system, which supports the view that the main challenge now is engineering execution rather than concept formation [SOSV, October 2025] [HAX]. The section should therefore be read as a report on the claimed process architecture and announced demo milestones, not as confirmation that throughput, recovery, or unit economics have yet been independently validated in the field [Still Bright] [TechCrunch, July 2025].
No independent source found -- Material claims about recovery rates, process conditions, and cost or emissions advantages are primarily company-sourced, with partial repetition in TechCrunch, HAX, SOSV, and Grist.
The Market They Are Entering
PUBLIC Copper processing is attracting fresh attention because the market needs more metal while the legacy route, smelting sulfide ores at high heat, remains energy-intensive and geographically concentrated, which creates room for alternatives that can lower cost or emissions if they work at scale [TechCrunch, July 2025] [Still Bright].
Still Bright is not entering a new demand category so much as proposing a different production pathway into an existing one. The public record supports that framing more clearly than any formal market size claim. TechCrunch describes the company as targeting lower-cost copper recovery from sulfide ores, while the company and HAX position the wedge around processing ores and mine waste that are less attractive under conventional smelting economics [TechCrunch, July 2025] [Still Bright] [HAX]. In practical terms, that places the addressable market somewhere inside the much larger copper value chain, but the available sources do not cite a named third-party TAM, SAM, or SOM estimate specific to Still Bright's route.
Because the company is selling into production infrastructure rather than consumer demand, the cleaner way to read the market is through adjacent public segments. The immediate adjacent market is primary copper production from sulfide ore, since Still Bright says RACER is designed to extract copper from sulfides without conventional smelting [Still Bright] [Grist]. A second adjacent market is mine-waste and lower-grade resource processing, where HAX says the technology could expand production to resources that are currently nonviable, and TechCrunch frames the opportunity as recovering copper from ore and waste more cheaply [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025]. A third substitute set is the incumbent flowsheet itself, namely smelting and related hydrometallurgical steps, because customers would compare Still Bright against existing capex, permitting, energy, and recovery economics rather than against a different end market [Still Bright] [HAX].
| Market lens | What the public evidence supports | Source quality |
|---|---|---|
| Primary target market | Copper recovery from sulfide ores without conventional smelting | Company and media corroboration [Still Bright] [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
| Adjacent expansion market | Processing mine waste and other resources that may be uneconomic today | Company ecosystem source and media framing [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
| Substitute market | Conventional smelting and incumbent copper processing routes | Company description of the process replacing smelting [Still Bright] |
The table makes the main point. This is best understood as a process-displacement market inside copper supply, not a demand-creation story, and the core diligence question is whether the process can clear mining-industry thresholds on throughput, recovery, and operating reliability.
Demand drivers are easier to see than market size. Public coverage ties the company's appeal to a simple combination: more copper is needed, and producers want a route that is cheaper, less emissions-intensive, and usable on resources that current methods do not handle well [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025]. Still Bright's own materials say the process operates near ambient temperature and pressure and can recover 90 percent to 99 percent of copper in minutes, while external coverage echoes the lower-emissions and lower-cost framing [Still Bright] [Grist] [NJBiz, June 2026]. Those claims remain company-led or coverage-based, so they do not settle commercial viability, but they do explain why miners, copper producers, and climate-focused investors would pay attention.
Two macro forces also matter. First, localization and on-site processing are a recurring theme in the sourced material: HAX says the system can be integrated directly at mine sites and paired with renewable power, while TechCrunch presents the company as a way to produce copper without relying on conventional smelting infrastructure [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025]. Second, the regulatory and financing backdrop appears supportive for lower-emissions industrial technologies, as shown by the investor syndicate around the July 2025 seed round, which included climate and industrial specialists such as Material Impact, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Fortescue, Azolla Ventures, Impact Science Ventures, and SOSV [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025]. That is not the same as policy validation, but it is a useful signal that decarbonized metals processing is now financeable at the seed stage.
The main limiting factor in this market view is evidence depth. No cited third-party report in the source set quantifies the specific market slice for electrochemical copper extraction from sulfides, and no public customer contracts or deployments are named [TechCrunch, July 2025]. As a result, the market case rests less on a published TAM model and more on a conditional thesis: if Still Bright can prove that its electrochemical route delivers recovery, throughput, and cost advantages at demonstration scale, it would be competing for spend already embedded in copper production and mine-site processing budgets rather than trying to create a new budget line [Still Bright] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025].
One source, partially checked -- Market direction is supported by TechCrunch, SOSV, HAX, and company materials, but the section lacks third-party market sizing data and relies in part on company-described end markets and adjacent-market inference.
The Competitive Field
MIXED Still Bright is not competing to sell a new copper end-market, it is competing to replace or sit alongside the incumbent route of smelting and other mine-site processing choices with an electrochemical copper recovery process that, according to the company, works at roughly ambient temperature and pressure [Still Bright] [TechCrunch, July 2025].
The first bucket is the incumbent copper processing stack, especially conventional smelting, which Still Bright explicitly positions against through lower energy intensity and mine-site integration claims [Still Bright] [HAX]. The second bucket is mine operators' existing ore upgrading and waste-processing workflows, which are substitutes even if they are not framed as venture-backed competitors, because they already own plant relationships, permitting pathways, and operating budgets. The third bucket is adjacent hard-tech challengers in industrial decarbonization, not because they extract copper in the same way, but because they compete for the same pilot budgets, strategic investors, and operational attention inside mining and metals organizations, an overlap visible in Still Bright's syndicate of climate and industrial backers including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Fortescue, Material Impact, and SOSV [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025].
Still Bright's edge today appears to rest less on distribution and more on technical origin and process design. The company emerged from Columbia University research, and its founding bench includes Jon Vardner, Alan West, and Scott Banta, each tied to the underlying electrochemistry work or the Columbia chemical engineering ecosystem [Still Bright] [Deep Tech Week, April 2025]. That is meaningful in a category where process chemistry, reactor design, and scale-up know-how matter more than software iteration speed. The edge is durable if the RACER process can reproduce its reported recovery claims outside the lab and into demonstration conditions, because electrochemical process IP and operating know-how can be sticky once validated. It is perishable if mine customers view the technology as one of several financing-intensive pilot options rather than a proven process replacement, since the public record does not yet show named customers, commercial deployments, or an operating mine-site unit [TechCrunch, July 2025] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025].
The largest exposure is not a named startup rival in the record, but the installed base of incumbent metallurgy. Smelters and existing processing routes have throughput, qualification history, and customer trust that a 2022-founded company does not yet have [TechCrunch, July 2025]. Still Bright also does not appear, from public sources, to own a captive distribution channel into major miners, and there is no public evidence yet of signed offtake, processing, or deployment partnerships that would narrow commercialization risk [TechCrunch, July 2025] [PR Newswire, June 2026]. HAX and SOSV support help on prototyping and early company-building, but they do not substitute for a mine operator willing to host and validate a unit at industrial conditions [SOSV, October 2025].
The most plausible 18-month scenario is that competition is decided by proof rather than messaging. If Still Bright can place its demonstration unit on schedule and show that the process sustains high recovery at mine-relevant conditions, Still Bright is the most plausible winner in its immediate lane because the public narrative already ties the company to lower-cost, lower-emissions copper recovery and a 500-ton-per-year demonstration target [TechCrunch, July 2025] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025]. If the timeline slips or performance degrades materially at scale, the likely winner is the incumbent smelting route by default, not because incumbents improved, but because operational buyers usually stay with the qualified process they already know when the alternative remains pre-commercial [Still Bright] [TechCrunch, July 2025]. In that downside case, the relative loser is Still Bright, since its differentiation depends on converting technical promise into an installed industrial process rather than into a lighter-weight software or services sale.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
The prize here is unusually large for a seed-stage industrial company: if Still Bright can prove that its electrochemical copper process works at demonstration and then commercial scale, it has a path to becoming a new production route for one of the world’s most strategic industrial metals, not just a niche equipment vendor [TechCrunch, July 2025] [Still Bright] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025].
The headline opportunity is straightforward. Still Bright is trying to replace conventional smelting for sulfide ores with an electrochemical process that the company says operates at approximately ambient temperature and pressure and can recover up to 99% of copper from sulfide ore [Still Bright] [Grist]. That matters because the company is not pitching a new copper demand story, it is pitching a cheaper and lower-emissions way to supply an existing market that is already large enough to support very large outcomes if a new process wins adoption [TechCrunch, July 2025]. The reason that outcome looks reachable rather than purely aspirational is that the company has moved beyond university research into venture-backed scale-up, raised an $18.7 million seed round led by Material Impact with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Azolla Ventures, Fortescue, Impact Science Ventures, and SOSV, and has publicly described a 500-ton-per-year demonstration unit targeted for 2027 or 2028 [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025] [Still Bright] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025].
The upside branches into a few distinct paths, and each depends on a specific proof point rather than abstract category enthusiasm.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demonstration-to-plant conversion | Still Bright proves the 500-ton annual demonstration unit at a mine site and converts that into its first commercial-scale installations for mining operators | A successful demonstration reactor coming online in 2027 or 2028 at a mine site [MIT Technology Review, November 2025] | The company has already articulated both the demonstration milestone and a longer-term 10,000-ton-per-year commercial system, which suggests a defined scale-up path rather than an open-ended lab program [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025] |
| Waste-to-value processing wedge | The company starts with mine waste or lower-viability sulfide resources, where incumbent economics are weaker, and uses that beachhead to expand into primary ore processing | Early industrial validation that RACER can economically process resources conventional smelting leaves stranded [HAX] [Still Bright] | HAX says the technology expands copper production to currently nonviable resources, and the company’s own materials frame mine waste as part of the target feedstock set [HAX] [Still Bright] |
| On-site electrified refining platform | Still Bright becomes an on-site processing partner for miners seeking cleaner domestic or mine-adjacent production without traditional smelting infrastructure | A mine-site deployment that shows integration with electric power and local processing economics [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025] | HAX says the process can be integrated directly at mine sites and paired with renewable power, while external reporting frames the core value proposition as lower-cost, lower-emissions copper recovery [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025] |
If compounding shows up, it is likely to come from process validation rather than software-style network effects. One working demonstration plant could improve customer trust, unlock harder-to-get feedstock data, and reduce financing friction for follow-on installations; in hard tech, that kind of referenceability often functions as the distribution flywheel. There are early signs of that sequence forming: the company emerged from Columbia University research, received support through HAX, secured a JLL Foundation loan for lab-scale R&D and equipment before fundraising, and then closed a seed round with a syndicate that spans climate investors and an industrial participant in Fortescue [Still Bright] [JLL Foundation, February 2025] [SOSV, October 2025] [TechCrunch, July 2025]. If RACER does lower capex versus smelting as HAX states, and if performance at ambient temperature and pressure holds outside the lab, each installation could also make the next sale easier by narrowing both upfront infrastructure requirements and operating complexity [HAX] [Still Bright].
The size of the win is best framed in physical throughput terms because public revenue data does not exist yet. The company has publicly discussed a 500-ton-per-year demonstration unit, a longer-term 10,000-ton-per-year commercial system, and, in a separate foundation profile, an ambition for full-scale production of 1,000 tons of copper per day [TechCrunch, July 2025] [MIT Technology Review, November 2025] [SOSV, July 2025] [JLL Foundation, February 2025]. Even allowing for the fact that these are company-linked targets rather than observed output, the range implies an outcome where Still Bright is not merely selling pilot systems but potentially operating or enabling meaningful industrial copper capacity. If the company reaches the 10,000-ton-per-year system level across multiple sites, the resulting enterprise could resemble a strategic process platform for copper production rather than a single-asset startup (scenario, not a forecast) [TechCrunch, July 2025] [SOSV, July 2025]. The upper bound, if mine-site deployment and stranded-resource processing both work, is a business that participates directly in how new copper supply is brought online, which is the kind of positioning that can support very large strategic value in industrial decarbonization markets (scenario, not a forecast) [HAX] [TechCrunch, July 2025].
No independent source found -- This section relies materially on company claims and company-linked target capacities, with partial corroboration from TechCrunch, MIT Technology Review, SOSV, HAX, and JLL Foundation.
Sources
Publicly reported
[Still Bright] About Us | https://www.stillbright.co/about
[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/
[SOSV, July 2025] Still Bright raises $18.7M seed round to slash copper costs | https://sosv.com/still-bright-raises-18-7m-seed-round-to-slash-copper-costs/
[Deep Tech Week, April 2025] Deep Tech Week | https://www.deep-tech-week.com/organizations/still-bright
[HAX] Still Bright | https://hax.co/company/still-bright/
[PR Newswire, June 2026] Clean-tech innovator relocates to Northeast Science and Technology Center | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clean-tech-innovator-relocates-to-northeast-science-and-technology-center-302804228.html
[MIT Technology Review, November 2025] How a startup plans to clean up one of the dirtiest industries on the planet | https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/13/1117528/still-bright-cleaner-copper-production/
[Crunchbase] Still Bright | Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/still-bright
[Dealroom.co] Still Bright company information, funding & investors | https://app.dealroom.co/companies/still_bright
[JLL Foundation, February 2025] 2024 Annual Report | https://foundation.jll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2024_AR_FINAL.pdf
[SOSV, October 2025] How HAX Helps Hard Tech Founders Rapidly Prototype, Develop... | https://sosv.com/prototyping-to-production-how-hax-helps-hard-tech-founders-build-hard-tech/
[NJBiz, June 2026] Still Bright selects NEST for global headquarters | https://njbiz.com/still-bright-global-headquarters-nest/
Articles about Still Bright
- Still Bright's Electrochemical Copper Process Aims for a 500-Ton Demo by 2028 — The Columbia spinout's seed round will fund a demonstration reactor that could reshape the economics of a critical metal.