Riven Systems, a New York-based industrial chemistry startup, has raised $7.9 million in pre-seed funding to develop AI-powered technology for critical minerals processing.
The funding round was led by Cerberus Ventures, with participation from Scout Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Lightscape Partners and CLAI. New System Ventures joined as the incubating investor.
Using AI to Process Critical Minerals
Founded by Chip Breitenkamp and Orion Archer Cohen, Riven Systems is developing an AI platform designed to modernize industrial chemistry and make critical minerals processing faster and more efficient.
Critical minerals such as rare earth elements are important for industries including defense, energy and computing. However, much of the world’s processing capacity is controlled by China.
Riven aims to help build a stronger U.S. supply chain by combining AI, computational modeling and automated laboratories to develop better ways of processing critical minerals.
Focus on Rare Earth Elements
The company plans to use its technology to help domestic producers reduce the cost and time needed to develop new mineral processing methods.
Riven has also received a grant through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, a highly competitive program supporting AI-based research in energy, science and national security.
As part of the project, Riven is working with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. The initial research will focus on rare earth elements.
Experienced Founding Team
Riven’s co-founders bring experience in computational chemistry and advanced materials.
CEO Chip Breitenkamp has more than 20 patent families and previously served as president of battery materials company NanoGraf Corporation. CTO Orion Archer Cohen holds a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley and helped develop TorchSim, an open-source tool for AI-based atomistic simulations.
Riven Systems said it is using the new funding to develop its technology and expand its team. The company is currently hiring for positions in computational chemistry, machine learning, process chemistry and business development.
“Today’s critical minerals bottleneck is ultimately a chemistry problem; ores and feedstocks have changed over time, but legacy industrial chemistry hasn’t,” said Dr. Breitenkamp. “By leveraging America’s lead in AI to identify new chemical extractants and optimize existing facilities, Riven will accelerate mineral processing deployment for domestic miners in the near term and, over the long term, build a chemistry platform capable of scaling across industries.”
“With the West still heavily reliant on China for critical minerals processing, building a secure, domestic, end-to-end supply chain has become a strategic imperative. Yet much of today’s U.S. processing infrastructure remains dependent on manual, capital intensive chemical methods. To compete, we need to leverage AI-driven technologies that continuously optimize and modernize these processes,” said Sarah Istel, Managing Director at Cerberus Ventures. “That’s why Cerberus Ventures is excited to back Riven. Chip, Orion, and their team are tackling one of the industry’s most important challenges: creating the first autonomous platform for mineral separation. Powered by one of the world’s largest separations datasets, Riven’s technology aims to enable rapid deployment of modular, feedstock-specific processing solutions, paving the way for the U.S. to potentially onshore critical minerals processing at scale.”
