Say hello to Thunderstone

Hello and welcome to our very first newsletter!

It’s been a whirlwind year, and we’re excited to share all the work our team has been doing to enable sustainable critical metal extraction without the mine.

If you’re new here, at Thunderstone, we envision a world where we obtain critical metals from the ground in a cheaper, faster, more precise and sustainable way. We spun out from Deep Science Ventures (DSV) and have since established our headquarters in San Francisco, where the team is now based.

Since incorporating last September, it’s been a busy time for us; we’ve had great progress on product development and a lot of VC interest in a short space of time.

For this reason, we want to bring you updates about our journey in real time.

Our journey began at DSV, where our founder, Eric, started as an Associate. He brought a strong background as a researcher with a PhD in solar fuels and experience co-founding / leading over 10 organizations in areas like recycling and carbon dioxide removal.

After intentionally scoping the seemingly impossible challenge of supplying critical minerals that support global infrastructure, Thunderstone spun out of DSV and officially emerged from stealth in February 2024.

The company was built to solve one key issue: enable access to critical metals at scale. Current mining methods spend about 90% of cost and energy crushing and moving rock, only to yield a tiny fraction of the critical metal.

In just one year, we’ve successfully built and tested our technology from theory to real-world materials and then to a working prototype.

You’re probably wondering why and how we came to this, continue reading.

We broke down the critical metal space and found the biggest bottleneck wasn’t finding more rock or improving recycling methods, but rather, the extraction needed to be solved instead.

Mineral demand forecasts are conclusive: there’s a need for a 5x metal rate increase that is agnostic to any single mineral forecast.

To follow on from this, we developed a solution to extract metal, while leaving the rocks in the ground.

Our technology uses high-voltage electricity, aka “underground lightning,” aiming for over 100,000 volts, to directly stimulate the ore body. This creates one-dimensional channels underground to unclog ore and increase hydraulic conductivity (how liquid flows) precisely where the metals are concentrated. This entails:

• Energy savings: Our method is designed to minimize the amount of rock we need to interfere with in order to release metals.

• Environmental advantage meets profit: by leaving the rock in place, we avoid creating giant open pits, often leading to a risk of a damaged ecosystem. We are focused on engineering a full circulatory system in the ore body, making it an order of magnitude less impactful than traditional methods.

The market is responding to this with open arms. We recently closed a $1.25M Pre-Seed round, well above our target, from some of the biggest names in VC, our lead was Roadrunner, and key partners include Dangerous, Founders Factory and Rio Tinto. We also recently became part of the 2025 cohort of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows (BE Fellows) program. BE Fellows supports innovators as they bridge the gap from lab to market. It offers early-stage capital and provides mentorship, education, and access to the Breakthrough Energy network.

This capital allows us to accelerate our progress toward building a solution to precisely extract critical metals without the need for traditional mining. We are already working with a strategic mining major and exploring partnerships with other mines to fast-track in-ground testing.

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We’ll be using this Substack to give you exclusive looks at our breakthroughs, company announcements, team updates, and hot takes from our new home in San Francisco.

Stay tuned for the next update, subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn!

Eric and the Thunderstone team