Transition Metal Solutions Raises $6M Seed to Scale Bio-Enabled Copper Recovery Platform

New updates have been reported about Transition Metal Solutions.

Transition Metal Solutions has secured an oversubscribed $6 million seed round to accelerate commercialization of its chemistry-driven biomining platform, positioning the company to move from lab-scale success to industrial pilot testing as copper markets tighten. The 2023-founded company, recently rebranded from Transition Biomining, develops custom chemical additives that tune naturally occurring microbial communities in ore bodies to increase metal recovery without new capital equipment. In laboratory trials on low-grade primary sulfide ore, the approach increased copper recovery rates from 60% to 90%, while tests on refractory, high-carbonate ores delivered in situ acid generation and metal leaching three times faster than industry norms. Led by Transition Ventures with participation from SOSV, Dolby Family Ventures, Astor Management AG, Juniper VC, Climate Capital, and several new climate and deeptech investors across the US, Europe, and Australia, the seed round will fund 3-meter column pilot trials slated to begin in the first half of 2026.

CEO and founder Dr. Sasha Milshteyn, a biophysicist with two decades of experience in metagenomics and synthetic biology, built Transition Metal Solutions around the insight that most of the required biological machinery already exists in mine heaps and can be unlocked with targeted chemistry rather than lab-grown microbes. COO and co-founder Alexandra Shiluk emphasizes that the company’s drop-in model is designed to integrate into existing leach operations with no additional infrastructure, lowering adoption barriers for miners seeking higher yields from low-grade and complex deposits. Operating from UC Berkeley’s Bakar Labs, the company has assembled a leadership and advisory team with deep mining and metallurgical experience, including CCO Vania Grandi and board director Dr. Peter Kondos. With global copper demand projected to rise 50% by 2040, richer deposits largely depleted, and copper newly designated a US critical mineral, Transition Metal Solutions is positioning its low-emission alternative to traditional smelting as a scalable way for miners to unlock stranded value and, over time, extend the platform to other critical metals such as nickel, cobalt, gold, and zinc.