Zug, Switzerland/Abu Dhabi, UAE: Open Mineral, a global digital trade platform for base metal commodities, raised $33 million today in a deal led by the Abu Dhabi sovereign investment fund Mubadala Investment Company. New investors Statkraft and Lingfeng Capital joined existing investors Emerald Technology Ventures and Xploration Capital in the Series C round, the largest-ever for the insurgent start-up. Open Mineral will use the capital to accelerate its already-profitable growth and advance its leading position in online metal raw materials trading.
In bringing transparency to a notoriously opaque space, Open Mineral—a 2019 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and recipient of the 2020 S&P Global Platts Rising Star Company Award—aims to revolutionize the metals trade by providing a one-stop marketplace for mines and the smelters they sell to. With its cutting-edge trading platform and proprietary pricing algorithms, it has attracted over 900 metals and mining companies from around the world. It is currently developing a suite of financial products, including derivatives, to drive further value for clients in a $200 billion sector where most participants still trade via paper documents.
As part of Open Mineral’s vision of a cleaner metals supply chain, the company is also working to embed environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into the products traded on its platform. It has developed automated material optimization solutions to enable more efficient, informed, and profitable trade of physical metal raw commodities. These steps are crucial in supporting the metal and mining industries’ transition to a lower carbon world.
“The metal trading industry’s future is in digital data and analytics enabling market participants to communicate faster and make quicker, more data-driven decisions,” said Boris Eykher, CEO & co-founder of Open Mineral. “Just as eBay revolutionized retail purchasing by bringing more choices to buyers and sellers, we aim to do the same for physical commodity producers in the curated, trusted environment of the Open Mineral platform. Tagging scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions to products and providing sellers with an understanding of their scope 3 impacts from selling to different buyers will also greatly aid miners in reducing their carbon footprint.”
“We have grown all the more excited about the progress of Open Mineral since our initial investment in 2018,” said Hans Dellenbach, partner at Emerald Technology Ventures. “The team was able to build a profitable platform and always delivers on its promises. The investment by a large sovereign wealth fund like Mubadala gives the company a further stamp of approval and will help to scale the business globally.”
Faris Al Mazrui, head of Russia and CIS investments at Mubadala, said: “Open Mineral is disrupting the commodity trading business by leveraging data analytics technology. Buyers and sellers of base metal commodities can tap into a unique and proprietary data hub to trade more efficiently and capture upside. Mubadala has been investing in technology for more than a decade; we see strong potential in Open Mineral and are keen to support its growth and evolution.”