Cyclic Materials announced this week has received an equity investment from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, an initiative dedicated to accelerating technology development and deployment of new climate innovations.
Over the past two years, Cyclic has developed a patent-pending technology called “CC360” to specifically address the challenge of recovering rare earths contained in end-of-life hard drives. While hard drives are typically sent to an IT asset disposal company at the end of life, this disposal process is designed for data destruction, followed by shredding of drives for the recovery of other metals such as gold and silver. The rare earths contained, however, are currently not recovered.
“Microsoft is working to achieve zero waste across our direct operations, products, and packaging by 2030. This means adopting a circular economy approach,” Brandon Middaugh, senior director of the Climate Innovation Fund, stated. Established in 2021, Cyclic Materials aims to develop technologies that can economically, sustainably and domestically transform end-of-life products into valuable raw materials. The company recently opened its “Hub100” plant in Kingston, deploying its proprietary hydrometallurgical technology, REEPure, and helping fulfill the increasing demand for domestic sources of mixed rare earth oxide in North America.