The US doesn’t refine cobalt. This startup wants to change that.

Cobalt is one of the world’s best battery materials, but geopolitically, it’s less than ideal. The world’s largest reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where mining has long been laced with human rights abuses, and 72% of the metal is refined in China. Cobalt may be used in a lot of electric vehicles, but the material isn’t just an EV problem. The U.S. military is dependent on Cobalt for lithium-ion batteries that power drones and other devices, and also for the alloys inside jet engines and magnets for missile guidance systems. There aren’t any cobalt refineries in the U.S. today, upping the stakes for the metal’s consumers. “Everybody’s been worried about [China’s leverage], but now they’ve actually shown that they’ll cut off critical minerals,” John Busbee, co-founder and CEO of Xerion Advanced Battery Corp., told TechCrunch. “Everybody’s like, what do we do?” Busbee thinks Xerion has a solution. His company has a new technique to produce highly refined cobalt in a ... Read full article.