Aether: $49M for Lithium Extraction with ML and Molecular Assembly

Aether uses robotics and machine learning to extract lithium from untapped reserves, aiming to make the U.S. a global lithium powerhouse while scaling with nondilutive funding.Aether is a molecular assembler platform that can extract lithium from previously inaccessible reserves. It uses robots and machine learning to search among trillions of enzymes for the right fit.Pavle is a first-time founder and almost college dropout (there’s a story to that!) who’s spent almost seven years building Aether and raising $49M along the way.In this episode, you’ll learn these four important takeaways and much more.How he hopes to make the US the lithium capital of the worldWhich revenue models he’s pursuing with mining partnersHow he’ll use nondilutive funding to scale tech deploymentWhy “I don’t know” is a powerful phrase to build trust🔗 PODCAST SHOW LINKS:Aether - https://www.aetherbio.com Pavle - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlejeremic Noahpinions (newsletter) - https://substack.com/@noahpinion The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World - https://shorturl.at/inj📈 JOIN EFI’S CLIMATE CEO PEER GROUP:Become an EFI Climate CEO Fellow — Join North America’s top private peer group community for growth-stage CEOs in climate tech and sustainability. We’re a community of 75+ CEO Fellows, Alumni Allies, and Mentors (investors and post-exit CEOs) representing over $20B of market value or financial assets for climate solutions. Apply here: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.entrepreneursforimpact.com⁠⁠⁠📣 READ EFI’S NEWSLETTER:Join over 20,000 entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators who get our three-minute read about changing the world through startups, finance, humor, and wisdom. ⁠⁠⁠https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com⁠⁠⁠✍🏼 LEAVE A PODCAST REVIEW:To help more people discover the climate tech CEOs and investors we interview, please take one minute to review or rate this podcast. Since we don’t take any sponsors for this podcast, we appreciate this small gesture of your appreciation. Here are instructions: ⁠⁠⁠https://ratethispodcast.com/guides/where-can-people-leave-podcast-reviews🤔 PODCAST HOST:Dr. Chris Wedding is the founder of EFI (climate CEO peer groups), cofounder of Terraset (carbon removal), Senior Advisor at Javelin Capital (investment banking), Board member at World Tree (regenerative forestry), Board Advisor at DG Matrix (next-gen power electronics), Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, occasional monk, father of three, 2x ax-throwing champ (huh?), Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2006 (Google it), and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio).