Supra Elemental Recovery Inc. (Supra), a startup that spun out of engineering and natural sciences labs at The University of Texas at Austin, has launched with a $250,000 investment from Discovery to Impact's UT Seed Fund as part of its pre-seed funding round. Supra will commercialize its proprietary technology that leverages advances in chemistry, materials science and engineering to recover critical minerals at high purity from U.S. waste sources, including mine tailings, industrial byproducts and electronic waste.
"Supra has the potential to reshape how the U.S. sources key materials essential for the high-tech, aerospace and defense industries," said Mark Arnold, associate vice president for Discovery to Impact and managing director of Longhorn Ventures. "Their work exemplifies the innovation taking place at UT when you have the brightest minds across disciplines collaboratively working together to solve real-world problems."
Supra's technology could help satisfy the growing demand for minerals such as cobalt, lithium, gallium and scandium - which are notoriously difficult to refine - needed to manufacture semiconductors, batteries, magnets and everyday electronics. Shoring up the domestic supply chain for rare earth elements may also reduce U.S. reliance on foreign markets. Leading extraction methods struggle to achieve high purity and effectively separate different critical minerals from each other. They also involve significant machinery and high-costs, and they produce toxic chemicals harmful to the environment.
The UT inventors behind Supra's breakthrough technology include Zachariah Page, an award-winning chemist, Michael Cullinan, an established leader in semiconductors and nanomanufacturing processes, and Jonathan Sessler, one of the fathers of supramolecular chemistry and founder of Pharmacyclics, a company that used advanced receptors to target cancer and sold for $21 billion in 2015.
Their specialties complement each other in a novel way that led to Supra's innovative platform: a 3D-printed, porous cartridge that acts like a sponge, leveraging cutting-edge fluid dynamics to filter materials at the molecular level using simple solvents such as alcohol and water. The technology combines the best aspects of solvent extraction and ion exchange methods for refining minerals into a reusable and high-performing cartridge that can be customized and scaled to meet the needs of U.S.-based manufacturers, mines and industry partners interested in recovering or sourcing high-grade critical minerals.
The result is a more affordable and scalable way to domestically retrieve valuable elements from millions of tons of industrial and e-waste produced in the U.S. each year.
"America's ability to compete in advanced manufacturing depends on securing its supply of critical minerals," said Katie Ullmann Durham, co-founder and CEO of Supra. "We're ushering in a new era where we can profitably recover these elements from a wide range of domestic sources to restore America's resource dominance."
Supra joins more than 100 startups that have spun out of UT supported by Discovery to Impact, including 12 startups formed in 2025. As the bridge between campus innovators, industry and the investment community, Discovery to Impact helps move UT research discoveries to the commercial sector through startup formation, industry collaborations, and by licensing UT technologies to businesses to bring them to market.
