Launched500: Two Years On with Magrathea

For the past two years, Unearthed’s Launched feature has put emerging innovators on the radar of the mining and resources sector.

Delivered as a lightweight weekly list, Launched highlights the capability, location and potential industry relevance of startups developing new technologies, products and solutions around the world.

As Launched passes its 100 week milestone, the feature has now showcased more than 500 emerging startups, scaleups and disruptive innovations.

To mark the occasion, we have reconnected with several companies featured during its earliest weeks. This series explores how their technologies, teams and market opportunities have evolved over the past two years, and what they have learned while working to turn emerging capabilities into embedded heavy industry solutions.

Magrathea

Located: Oakland, California, USA, with commercial scale development progressing in southwest Arkansas.

Founding team:

• Alex Grant: Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
• Jacob Brown: Co-Founder and Chief Scientist 

Magrathea was founded in 2022 by chemical engineers Alex Grant and Jacob Brown, who brought previous experience from lithium, batteries and advanced industrial technology. The company is developing a new generation of electrolytic processes to produce magnesium metal from seawater and magnesium rich brines.

Funding and commercial backing:

Magrathea completed a US$24 million Series A round in March 2026, co led by Resource Technology Capital and Balerion Space Ventures, with participation from new and returning industrial technology investors.

The round brought Magrathea’s reported total backing to more than US$100 million across private investment, government support and commercial partnerships.

Current development and deployment:

Magrathea commissioned its magnesium chloride electrolyser at its Oakland pilot facility in May 2025, providing the technical and operational data required to support development of larger commercial facilities.

The company has since formed Arkansas Magnesium, a joint venture with TETRA Technologies, to develop magnesium production at TETRA’s Evergreen chemical campus in southwest Arkansas. 

In June 2026, the partners announced that Magrathea’s proprietary process had produced magnesium metal exceeding 99.9 per cent purity.

Why Magrathea first caught our attention

Magrathea first came onto Unearthed’s radar after our Director, Holly Bridgwater, met members of its founding team and flagged the business as one our research team should follow.

Magnesium salts are widely available in seawater and industrial brines, but converting them into high purity magnesium metal through an economically competitive process remains difficult.

Magrathea’s approach combines proprietary magnesium chloride preparation and electrolysis technology to produce metal from seawater and brine feedstocks. 

This forward thinking approach was not proposing a new conventional magnesium mine. Instead, it was developing a process to create primary metal supply from resources including seawater, and mineral rich subsurface brines. 

When Magrathea was first featured on Launched, it had already produced magnesium from seawater at a small scale and attracted early support from investors and the US Government. However, the company still faced progressing their approach from successful technical validation into a repeatable industrial operation.

Two years later, Magrathea commissioned its pilot-scale electrolyser, completed its Series A, and established commercial and offtake relationships.

Two years on: catching up with Magrathea

We caught up with the Magrathea team to learn more about its journey over the past two years, the changes it is seeing across the magnesium market and what comes next for the business.

What are the biggest milestones you’ve achieved over the past two years?

We have advanced our technology development such that we are now confident in substantial CapEx and OpEx advantages over legacy electrolytic magnesium manufacturing processes.

Furthermore, in recognition of these accomplishments, we have entered into a joint venture, Arkansas Magnesium, with TETRA Technologies Inc., to build a demonstration and commercial-scale smelter at TETRA's Arkansas location.

We also completed our Series A fundraise, bringing total private and government funding to the company of $100M.

What have you observed changing in the market over that period?

With the continued ongoing domination of global magnesium supply by China, an important change we have seen over the past two years is the willingness of the US government to invest heavily in securing critical materials supply chains.

This has primarily been seen with respect to rare earth elements to date, but we see positive signs of investment interest in US-based magnesium manufacturing as well.

What do the next two years look like for your business?

Over the next two years, we expect to build and commission our joint-venture demonstration plant in Arkansas, which will prove the scale-up readiness of our technology.

We expect to begin engineering work on the follow-on full scale facility at the same location, a facility that, once operating, will eliminate Chinese domination of magnesium supply and restore supply chain resiliency to US consumers of magnesium.

Connecting mining with emerging innovation

Unearthed Solutions works at the intersection of industry need and emerging innovation, helping mining and resources companies look beyond familiar suppliers and technology stacks to identify new approaches to complex operational challenges.

Through features like Launched, and open innovation programs, we help promising innovators gain industry visibility while supporting mining organisations to discover capabilities with the potential to create meaningful operational impact.

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Building a technology for the resources sector, or looking for new solutions to an industry challenge?

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