The challenge of critical minerals: Why we invested in LISUS Energy

Rumbo Ventures
4 min readNov 6, 2023

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By Alicia Hernández

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, we often take for granted the indispensable role that critical minerals -such as lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earths- play in our daily existence. These unassuming elements, tucked away within the gadgets we use, the vehicles we drive, and even the food we consume, are the unsung heroes of our technological age. From smartphones to solar panels, from electric cars to medical devices, critical minerals form the bedrock of our world. Let us also highlight that our global energy system is in the midst of an unprecedented transition to clean energy that requires the massive deployment of a wide range of clean energy technologies, the majority of which also rely on critical minerals. As we witness a growing demand for these finite resources, it becomes increasingly vital to address the challenge of sourcing them sustainably.

In light of this urgency, at Rumbo Ventures we are very proud to have invested in LISUS Energy, a company solving what is one of the most pressing challenges of this century: meeting the ever-increasing demand for critical minerals and metals while ensuring sustainable and responsible practices in their mining and sourcing. In a nutshell, LISUS, a California-based startup, uses remote sensing data and applies AI to identify better sites to source minerals and to reduce the environmental impact of their production.

The issue with finite resources

Let us stress the dimension of this challenge. According to the International Energy Agency, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral resources compared to a traditional gasoline-powered vehicle, while an onshore wind energy facility demands nine times more mineral inputs than a natural gas power plant. Additionally, the amount of minerals required for each new unit of power generation capacity has surged by 50% since 2010, coinciding with the growing adoption of renewable energy sources (IEA, 2023). In summary, clean energy technologies become the fastest growing segment of demand for most minerals, and their share of total demand edges up to over 40% for copper and REEs, 60–70% for nickel and cobalt and almost 90% for lithium by 2040 in a “Sustainable Development Scenario” (IEA, 2023). But of course, these resources are finite. According to McKinsey, even in a high-case supply scenario, most critical minerals are expected to see a global supply–demand imbalance by 2030 or sooner (McKinsey & Company, 2023).

Now, how is LISUS contributing to the sustainable mining of critical minerals and why is its technology unique?

LISUS has designed two main products, Alchemist and Green Eye. Alchemist is an advanced mineral exploration software that detects areas with high concentration of minerals in dynamic environments. Specifically, it is a surface to subsurface algorithms to geostatistically characterize brownfields and to predict the areas with Lithium-rich brines, allowing to reduce water intensity and energy use. It searches for geophysical patterns that are associated with the presence of Lithium and then predicts the areas with highest concentrations of such material. By predicting the location of areas with Lithium, Alchemist offers to bring efficiency gains to mining operators and Lithium investors of at least $5 million USD per annum per project for an average-sized operation.

Green Eye, on the other side, will complement Alchemist by providing an environmental monitoring tool that uses data from satellites to monitor the environmental impact of mining sites. Green Eye is currently under development by LISUS.

The technology behind LISUS products is innovative and unique. While some satellites were originally designed to study things like plants and the Earth’s environment for activities such as agriculture, they are also useful to find geothermal sites and valuable minerals. This approach is completely new, as this geospatial information can provide guidance to find geothermal power and minerals like lithium. LISUS is using remote sensing data from these satellites to leverage environmental metrics that provide a more precise understanding of the subsurface, thus facilitating sustainable mining of critical minerals.

Powering the solution

At Rumbo we are also thrilled to support Latin American talent leading revolutionary climate-tech solutions. Oscar Neyra, founder of LISUS, is no exception to this thesis. He is a CEO that combines academic rigor with seasoned field experience. Born and raised in Mexico, he holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from UCLA, where he specialized in remote sensing. His expertise has been strengthened by spending time at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he built a complex multi-satellite data fusion architecture, pioneering the ability to combine data from different satellites to observe new attributes of the environment that cannot be detected otherwise. Oscar is joined by a brilliant executive team and a diverse set of world-class experts as advisors. The team has been able to achieve exciting milestones in record time, proving traction that is indicative of their success.

We are excited to support LISUS, Oscar, and the rest of the team in its journey to enable a net zero world. Whether you are a potential investor or customer, we invite you to learn more about this promising startup.

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Rumbo Ventures
Rumbo Ventures

Written by Rumbo Ventures

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