#268 Robot Pirates are Pillaging the Wasted Metals at the Bottom of the Ocean | Oliver Gunasekara (Impossible Metals)
JOIN US FOR THE HACK SUMMIT!The HackSummit returns to Newlab on December 10-11, bringing together 500 founders, funders, and industry leaders in Climate Deep Tech. Together we’ll explore abundance, alongside Founders and Investors at Andreessen Horowitz, Brimstone, Crux, DCVC, Durin, Earth AI, Endolith, Navier, Radical AI, Rainmaker, Voyager Ventures and SOSV. Sign up for 10% off here.Hey everyone, Silas here. Welcome back to CleanTechies, the show where we talk with the founders, funders, and visionaries building our clean future.In today’s episode, we’re heading deep (literally) into one of the most untouched frontiers on Earth. My guest, Oliver Gunasekara, is the co-founder and CEO of Impossible Metals, a company on a mission to mine the ocean floor without wrecking the planet.Now, before you picture some massive vacuum ripping up the seabed, forget it. That’s how it’s always been done for fifty years. Impossible Metals flipped the script. Instead of tractors and dredges, they’ve built fleets of autonomous underwater robots. Battery-powered, self-piloting, and armed with computer vision, these things hover above the seabed, picking up polymetallic nodules one by one like it’s a sci-fi claw machine.These nodules are loaded with four critical metals: nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. The stuff that powers EVs, wind turbines, batteries, and AI data centers. Every piece of the clean economy runs on metals like these. But here’s the problem: land-based mining is running out of high-grade ore. It’s also slow, expensive, and environmentally brutal.Oliver’s approach? Ten times cheaper. Zero deforestation. No child labor. And every operation runs off clean electricity.The world needs metals but we need a better way to get them.The geopolitical angle makes this even crazier. China currently controls between 40 and 90 percent of the world’s mineral supply. Deep-sea mining could flip that balance, giving the West a new, independent source of critical minerals.Impossible Metals already secured its own licensed exploration area through the Kingdom of Bahrain. And since the US never signed the UN’s Law of the Sea, it’s basically a two-track race to secure access. Oliver says the deep ocean is “the new real estate rush” and his team’s staking claim on the highest-grade zones before anyone else.And here’s the kicker: the market is massive — a half-trillion-dollar metals industry today that’s projected to hit a trillion by 2035.Oliver’s story goes beyond the tech, though. We talk about what it takes to build world-class teams, people who are “orders of magnitude better,” as he puts it, and how to align them on mission. We talk about fundraising clarity, why first-of-a-kind technologies need patient capital, and what it means to build something the world has literally never seen before.It’s a conversation about innovation, geopolitics, and the future of clean materials.Make sure to hit follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening, because we’ve got a huge announcement coming this quarter. Enjoy listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cleantechies.substack.com/subscribe
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