Switzerland-based Open Mineral, a digital platform that connects buyers and sellers of physical commodities to trade directly, efficiently, and transparently., announced that it has raised $33M (approx €28M) in a Series C round of funding.
The round was led by Mubadala Investment Company. Existing investors Xploration Capital and Emerald Technology Ventures were also joined by new investors Statkraft and Lingfeng Capital.
“The metal trading industry’s future is in digital data and analytics enabling market participants to communicate faster and make quicker, and more data-driven decisions”, said Boris Eykher, CEO & Co-Founder of Open Mineral.
He adds, “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 a curated, trusted environment of the Open Mineral platform. Our goal is to give end-to-end service, more information, transparency, and fair market terms to miners and smelters so they can make better decisions and ultimately become more profitable.”
Open Mineral will deploy the funds to accelerate its growth, solidify its physical supply chain merchant activities, and advance its leading position in digitising metal raw material trading.
Mubadala Investment Company
Mubadala Investment Company is a sovereign investor managing a global portfolio, aimed at generating sustainable financial returns for the Government of Abu Dhabi.
Mubadala’s $243.4B (approx €207M) portfolio spans six continents with interests in multiple sectors and asset classes. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, Mubadala has offices in London, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, and Beijing.
Open Minerals: What you need to know
The Swiss startup, founded by former Glencore traders Boris Eykher and Ilya Chernilovskiy, strives to disrupt the decades-old model for trading physical commodities through the use of technology and analytics
The Swiss company is planning to capitalise on the $200B (approx €170B) space where most participants are trading via paper documents. The company has developed proprietary pricing algorithms to drive broader value creation throughout the commodity supply chain.
Open Mineral is working with third-party providers to incorporate ESG metrics across the sell-side (supplier product offers) and buy-side (downstream processing) and developing the architecture to facilitate concentrate swaps in the prevailing costly freight environment.
The company has also developed automated blending/smelter material optimisation solutions enabling more efficient, informed, and profitable trade of physical metal raw commodities. The company covers raw materials like zinc, lead, copper, gold, silver and more.
So far, the company has onboarded more than 900 metal & mining companies from 40 different countries. Open Mineral is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, and has offices in Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
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